Andhra HC ropes in CID to look into TTD donations theft case from 2023

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The Andhra Pradesh High Court has asked the Crime Investigation Department (CID) to collect all records related to a 2023 case of alleged theft at the Tirumala Venkateshwara temple, managed by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) Board. The order comes two years after the case was disposed of by a Lok Adalat court after a ‘settlement’ was reached. 

In what is known as the Parakamani theft case, the accused, CV Ravi Kumar, was reportedly caught in April 2023 with nearly USD 11,300 (Rs 10 lakh) allegedly hidden in his undergarments. 

An FIR was initially registered by the police which only mentioned that USD 900 was recovered from Ravi Kumar. The case was later transferred to the Lok Adalat. After Ravi Kumar donated a few properties worth crores to TTD, a ‘settlement’ was reached in the Lok Adalat court. 

However, after the TDP-led coalition government came to power, a TTD probe alleged that the police exerted pressure on the TTD’s vigilance staff members to settle the issue in the Lok Adalat. 

Ravi Kumar was a clerk at the Tirumala Pedda Jeeyangar Mutt. He was authorised to supervise the counting process of TTD donations performed at the Parakamani Hall. The Tirumala temple is one of the richest Hindu temples in the world. Parakamani is the name of a voluntary ‘service’. Certain authorised devotee volunteers help the TTD count and sort donations to the temple, which includes cash, at times in the form of foreign currency, and also gold and valuable jewels. 

According to the TTDP vigilance probe report, Ravi Kumar and his wife had donated seven properties worth crores to the TTD in May 2023 claiming it was out of “pure devotion”, weeks after he was caught. 

In September 2023, the complainant, TTD assistant vigilance and security officer (AVSO) Y Satish Kumar, and the accused, Ravi Kumar, told the Lok Adalat court that they had reached a compromise and the case was closed. 

Two years later, on September 20, the High Court was hearing a petition by a Tirupati resident, M Sreenivasulu, challenging the validity of the Lok Adalat settlement. A division bench of the High Court suspended the Lok Adalat orders and directed the CID to seize all records related to the case from the TTD, the Lok Adalat bench, and the Tirumala One Town police, according to The Times of India. 

TDP leaders had been demanding a CID probe into the case for a while. 

Hailing the High Court order, two TTD Board members – BJP leader G Bhanuprakash Reddy and Tirupati Urban Development Authority chairman C Divakar Reddy – released CCTV footage of the 2023 theft. They questioned why the amount stated in the FIR was lower than the amount recovered and alleged a larger conspiracy in the case. 

IT Minister and TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh alleged that YSRCP leaders were complicit in the theft of nearly Rs 100 crore in foreign currency from the Parakamani hall.