Hours after the Commssion for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice posted an announcement Sunday from its president, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Humain, saying that Ghamdi had been replaced, the statement was removed from its website and the state news agency SPA declared the news "cancelled."
Saudi journalists said they were told simply not to report the original announcement, but were not clear whether Ghamdi would hold onto his position.
"Please cancel it and [do] not use it," SPA said about the original statement announcing Ghamdi's replacement, along with three other senior members of the religious police, also known as muttawa.
For weeks rumours have spread of Ghamdi's possible removal from his position in Islam's holiest city, after he gave interviews saying there was nothing wrong under Islamic dogma with mixing of unrelated men and women, and that Muslims were not absolutely bound to take their prayers with groups in mosques.
On Wednesday he made multiple denials after a news report said he had been fired by Humain for making statements advocating free mixing of unrelated men and women.
Humain did not give any reason for Sunday's announcement of his replacement.
But it came after Ghamdi was reportedly dressed down on Thursday by the country's highest cleric for saying that Muslims are not necessarily required to pray inside a mosque with a group of other Muslims in daily prayers.
Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh told Ghamdi he was getting involved in matters of Islamic sharia law that were outside his authority, the Al-Madinah newspaper reported on Friday.
Underscoring the point, Al-Sheikh said in his sermon during Friday prayers that anyone suggesting that congregation prayer is not necessary is "leading people to hell," according to reports.
Ghamdi's views contrasted with a key duty of the Saudi religious police, which is to enforce gender segregation and the closure of all shops and offices so that men will attend prayers together.
He has argued that Islamic scripture does not support the strict segregation enforced by Saudi Arabia's ultra-strict Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam.
"There is nothing in Islamic law about mixing," he said in interviews with Saudi newspapers.
Behind Ghamdi's case is an increasingly public battle over loosening the ultra-conservative rules governing the Islamic kingdom, including tight restrictions on women in public life and the world's only ban on women driving.
Saudi progressives, including much of the mainstream media, have been increasingly vocal and direct in criticising the religious police, and have made Ghamdi a public figure in reporting his bold statements.
In December Ghamid endorsed a new research university near Jeddah, where an international group of men and women scientists freely mix in their work.
The idea of the new university's free environment seemed to place him on the side of Saudi King Abdullah, for whom the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology is named.
Just two months earlier Abdullah had sacked cleric Sa'ad al-Shethry from the powerful Council of Senior Ulema after he criticised mixing of the sexes at the new institute.
Since then, religious conservatives have continued to blast Ghamdi's views.
In February, hardline cleric Abdulrahman al-Barrak called advocates of mixing "apostates" who should be executed.
And on a TV religious talk show last week, prominent Prince Khalid bin Talal accused Ghamdi of insulting the Prophet Mohammed with his arguments.
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