A Tirupati court on Monday sent the four accused arrested in connection with the alleged adulteration of laddus offered as ‘prasadam’ at the Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple to judicial custody till February 20, officials said.The CBI-led SIT arrested Vipin Jain and Pomil Jain, former directors of Bhole Baba Dairy, Apoorva Chawda from Vaishnavi Dairy and Raju Rajasekharan from AR Dairy which supplied dairy products to prepare the famed sweets, they said.The arrested people were produced before a Tirupati court on Monday which sent them to judicial custody till February 20, they said.
According to sources, the special investigation team (SIT) constituted on the Supreme Court orders had found serious violations at every step of ghee supply, leading to the arrests. The officials alleged that Vaishnavi Dairy officials secured tenders under the name of AR Dairy to supply ghee to the temple and were also involved in creating fake records to manipulate the tender process.
The SIT unearthed that Vaishnavi Dairy had falsely claimed that it sourced ghee from Bhole Baba Dairy while the authorities noticed that the latter did not possess the capacity to meet the temple board Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam’s demand, sources said. On the orders of the Supreme Court, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) set up a five-member SIT in November last year to investigate the allegations of the use of animal fat in making the laddus that are offered as ‘prasadam’ to the devotees at the Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple in Tirupati. The team comprised two officers from the central agency, two from the Andhra Pradesh Police and one from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), they said.
In its October 4, 2024, the apex court, after hearing the petitions by BJP leader Subramaniya Swamy and YSRCP Rajya Sabha MP YV Subba Reddy among others, said the probe into the allegation of using animal fat in making the laddu would be conducted by the SIT and will be supervised by the CBI director. Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu in September claimed that animal fat was used in preparing Tirupati laddus during the previous YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led regime in the state, triggering a massive political row.
During an NDA legislative party meeting in the southern state in 2024, Naidu alleged that the erstwhile YSRCP government did not even spare Sri Venkateswara temple and used substandard ingredients and animal fats to make the laddus.
The allegations sparked a massive controversy across the country.
