MAGAZINE Voices Devdutt Pattanaik Ravi Shankar Neha Sinha Ajai Sahni gaurav yadav Mata Amritanandamayi Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI november 23 2025 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Divine Tragedy Widespread corruption is eroding the sanctity of India’s sacred spaces Tirumala Laddoo-ghee adulteration & procurement fraud Large-scale adulteration of ghee used to make Tirupati laddoos: an Uttarakhand dairy (and proxy suppliers) allegedly supplied spurious ghee (palm/industrial fats + chemicals) for years (2019-2024); a CBI/SIT probe (2024-2025) exposed the network and arrests followed Hundi/donation thefts and small-scale thefts High footfall temples keep reporting hundi break-ins and opportunistic thefts; in late 2024/2025 there were arrests for attempts to steal from Srivari hundi and similar incidents captured on CCTV T By medha dutta yadav & tanisha saxena oday the pilgrim’s progress to many of India’s great temples winds through a , tortuous landscape of corruption, pollution, and careless callousness. The latest in this long chain of misdemeanours includes the Sabarimala gold theft scandal and the abominable adulteration of the sacred Tirupati laddoo—a sweet that has been an unbroken article of faith for centuries. Across the country from Kerala and , Tamil Nadu’s ancient shrines to Odisha and Uttarakhand’s billion-rupee institutions, idols go missing, treasuries are compromised, and governance failures erode trust in custodianship of the divine. And yet, faith itself remains immovable. It is written most visibly on the faces of the countless devotees now making their annual journey to Sabarimala—undeterred, unshaken, and unwavering. In the shadow of wrongdoing, their devotion endures, proving that even when systems falter, belief does not. The management of the shrine is now at the centre of a widening Goldgate that has exposed deep fissures in its governance. What is praised as a logistical marvel—an annual movement of millions of devotees through dense forests to a remote hill shrine—has begun to look increasingly like a system held together by ad-hoc practices, opaque procedures, and politically influenced decision-making. At the heart of the storm lies the alleged misappropriation of temple gold, a controversy that has triggered judicial censure, criminal investigations and a wave of public anger across Kerala. The crisis erupted when investigators found major discrepancies in how the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) had recorded and managed the temple’s gold-plated structures. Panels covering the sanctum’s doors, pillars, and dwarapalaka idols—originally plated during a 1998-99 renovation— were dismantled for repairs in 2019. But what should have been carefully logged as gold-clad components were officially recorded as mere “copper plates” in the 2019 mahazar, a misclassification the Kerala High Court later described as deeply suspicious. This reclassification raised immediate red flags: vigilance reports revealed that around 475-475.9 grams of extracted gold from the plating work had never been returned to the temple. The vigilance probe also showed that the plates were transported out of TDB premises for electroplating at a private facility Smart Creations in Chennai, , despite rules mandating that such high-value work be carried out only within temple premises under strict supervision. The situation worsened when a 420-page file detailing the original gold-plating specifications— long missing from TDB offices—surfaced only after a courtmonitored inspection. The document, which includes engineering drawings and gold-use records, had inexplicably been “overlooked” until the High Court demanded the files be produced. In a stern assessment, the court remarked that TDB had “failed in its duty” to safeguard temple assets and noted the absence of basic documentation in meeting minutes on when the valuable panels were dismantled. An email cited by investigators added to the unease: Unnikrishnan Potti, the sponsor who oversaw parts of the 2019 repair, had asked whether leftover gold from the restoration could be used “for a marriage”—a request the court called “deeply disturbing.” As the SIT widened its probe, several senior TDB officials, including former board members, an administrative officer and engineers, were named as accused. On October 18, 2025, the High Court publicly criticised the TDB’s archaic, largely manual record-keeping. Registers that should track the weights, descriptions, and donor details of jewellery and ornaments were found to be missing, incomplete, or improperly maintained. As expected, dirty politics has crossed the threshold. Opposition parties have demanded a complete revamp—or dissolution—of the TDB. The TDB, in its defence, has dismissed the allegations as politically motivated. The SIT has already arrested Potti—remanding him to custody—and the High Court has directed investigators to consider offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act and relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) relating to forgery and criminal breach of trust. The implications extend far beyond the Sabarimala affair. Audits of other Devaswom-managed temples in Kerala—such as the Guruvayur Devaswom Board, where the 2019-20 Kerala Audit report highlighted unverified inventories and unaccounted valuables—suggest that Sabarimala may be merely the most visible symptom of a wider institutional problem. Vivekanandh, partner at SMV Chambers and head of its Chennai branch, who leads the firm’s corporate advisory and litigation vertical and has extensive experience Gali Anjaneya Swamy Temple Hundi/donation theft and government takeover Viral CCTV footage showing alleged money-pocketing during donation counting prompted official inquiry; the Karnataka government declared the temple a “notified institution” and took control citing mismanagement and alleged corruption in temple-related legal disputes, notes: “Temples under state administration are legally treated as public institutions and therefore bound by tender transparency laws. Meticulous documentation, vendor vetting, laboratory-tested supplies and updated registers are legal obligations.” Faith Fractured At Tirumala, the laddoo is more than prasadam. It is a symbol of divine grace, carried home with reverence by millions each year. Which is why the revelation that adulterated ghee had entered the laddoo supply chain sent shockwaves through the devotional landscape. The first hints came when routine checks raised questions about the purity of ghee consignments. A court-appointed SIT—comprising the CBI, AP Police, and FSSAI—was assigned to untangle the truth. At the centre of the scheme stood Bhole Baba Organic Dairy Ltd., a dairy that Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) had blacklisted in 2022. Yet Bhole Baba had never really left. Investigators found that it had quietly slipped back into the tender process through proxy companies—notably Vyshnavi Dairy and AR Dairy—whose paperwork Bhole Baba allegedly prepared and manipulated. Forged GST invoices were created, fake food-safety certificates issued, and entire sets of lab reports fabricated. Sabarimala Missing/substituted gold Allegations and SIT probes revealed gold used in gold-plating/gilding (dwarapalaka idols/door frames) was replaced or unaccounted for; high-level investigations, raids, and arrests followed as audits uncovered discrepancies. This case prompted wider audits of other Devaswom temples Records showed that Bhole Baba had never procured milk or butter at all. Laboratory tests revealed the presence of foreign fats—palm oil, fish oil, even beef tallow and lard—chemicals utterly incompatible with the sanctity expected of prasadam. And yet, between 2019 and 2024, 68 lakh kg of this adulterated product had flowed seamlessly into Tirumala’s kitchens. In July 2024, four tankers of ghee were rejected after the National Dairy Development Board reports flagged the presence of animal fat. Standard procedure required their destruction. Instead, the tankers were quietly diverted to a stone-crushing unit near Vyshnavi Dairy There, according to . the SIT, the contents were “cleaned up,” relabelled, and, within weeks, funnelled back to the TTD through a different vendor channel. By August, the very same rejected ghee was being poured into the iconic laddoo mixture once again. A close aide of a former TTD chairman allegedly received hawala payments to keep the procurement doors open for the proxy firms. As the SIT dug deeper, the scandal grew murkier. Fake purchase records were created to show massive milk procurement that never happened. Tankers were rerouted through shell firms to camouflage origin. Entire batches of invoices were printed with the same serial numbers. Even testing reports were manipulated to hide the presence of industrial additives like monoglycerides and acetic acid esters—chemicals that have no place in ghee, let alone sacred offerings. The fallout was immediate and devastating. Devotees were enraged. In response, TTD rushed to set up a state-of-the-art food-quality testing lab at Tirumala, staffed by specially trained analysts. According to Dr Vinusha Reddy BJP spokesperson, , Andhra Pradesh, “Large temples can protect both scale and sanctity only through uncompromising transparency—traceable ingredients, surprise lab tests, monitored kitchens, and independent ethical oversight—backed by swift public communication whenever concerns arise. When devotees regard prasadam as sacred, even the slightest perception of compromise must be met with openness, accountability and rigorous systems that prove tradition and scale can coexist without eroding trust.” For devotees, the shock was not limited to the contamination. It was Turn to page 2 “Ultimately, safeguarding temple spaces is a shared responsibility: communities contribute skills, vigilance, and coordination with authorities, while priests and acharyas preserve both the tangible and intangible heritage by teaching, documenting, and engaging devotees.” Yudhistir Govinda Das, Monk, Trustee and Country Director of Communications, ISKCON India