Tirumala, October 20, 2013: In a major breakthrough, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam’s (TTD) vigilance and security sleuths on Saturday unearthed a massive racket involved in the black-marketing of darshan tickets. The sleuths who are investigating the case also took an offender named Chaitanya Kumar into custody and seized 46 darshan tokens from him.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the gang carried out the operation, hand in glove with the staff working at the Vaikuntan queue complex, through which the Rs.300 darshan ticket-holders are allowed for darshan of the presiding deity.

The modus operandi was simple. The staff entrusted with the responsibility of verifying the Rs.300 darshan tokens at the time of their entry into the queue complex deceitfully held back the tokens and recycled them to the devotees prepared to buy them in the black market at exorbitant rates. The devotees who were sold with the fraudulent tokens were later permitted for darshan by the gang.

Chief Vigilance and Security Officer G.V.G. Ashok Kumar suspected the nefarious activity to be flourishing for quite some time. Investigations also pointed at the involvement of senior officials.

Source: The Hindu, October 20, 2013