TTD official among 10 held for fraud in VIP darshan tickets

Sources said that on March 11 a group of 23 devotees came to the temple with VIP darshan tickets. When the tickets were scanned, the bar code were found to be fake. Following this, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) officials alerted the police raising suspicion of a possible racket in the VIP darshan tickets. 

The police swung into action picked up a few agents reportedly involved in the racket. During interrogation, it came to light that Dharmayya, a superintendent of the TTD, was the brain behind the entire fraud. He has reportedly been selling the VIP darshan tickets in collusion with Venugopal and Raju of Karnataka for the past two years. 

Explaining the modus operandi, sources said that VIPs who had donate Rs 10 lakh to the temple would be allowed to have break darshan with their families for a family of five apart from free accommodation three days in a year. Some of them would not use this facility. Dharmayya tracked the donors who have not availed this facility and collected their details. Later, he created fake VIP darshan tickets and sold them to devotees for Rs 4,000 to 5,000, while the actual cost of the ticket was Rs 500. 

Even as the fraudsters were thriving through the darshan ticket racket, the TTD sent SMS alerts to donors and other VIPs who issued recommendation letters for darshan tickets. 

However, the suspicion of officials strengthened after the visit of 23 pilgrims for VIP break darshan. The group made an error in one of the tickets and that exposed the whole racket. Totally 10 persons were arrested by the Andhra police on Wednesday. All of them have been remanded to judicial custody.