For over five years, devotees from the world’s richest and most visited temple in Andhra Pradesh thought they were eating sacred laddus, made in holy ghee that wasn’t after all as investigators say their belief was betrayed between 2019 and 2024, adding that fake and adulterated ghee was used in making the temple’s laddish, one of India’s worst religious food frauds.
Devotees from across the world never forget to carry the famous golden-brown Srivari laddu from the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) temple home, believing that each bite of golden-brown sweet carries Lord Venkateswara’s blessing.
Tirumala temple is by no means a religious site, it’s India’s wealthiest with assets over $30 billion. More than 10 tons of gold are deposited in banks under the temple’s name, while the temple collects on average nearly a million dollars from over 60,000 to 80,000 pilgrims each day.
Its Potu kitchen, which is also one of the world’s largest, prepares over 300,000 laddus daily using more than 1,500 kg of ghee.
The Central Bureau of Investigation and a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team have named Uttarakhand-based Bhole Baba Organic Dairy for supplying 6.8 million kg of “desi ghee” to the temple, despite not having any record of milk or butter procurement.
The so-called ghee, tests later showed, was actually a chemical concoction of palm oil, monodiglycerides, and acetic acid ester, and sometimes even laced with animal fat and fish oil.
Even after the firm was blacklisted in 2022, its promoters Pomil and Vipin Jain reportedly floated proxy companies, including Vyshnavi Dairy (Tirupati), Mal Ganga Dairy (U.P.) and AR Dairy Foods (Tamil Nadu), to continue winning tenders and funneling adulterated ghee into the temple’s kitchens.
Then, in 2024, when labs found traces of animal fat in samples from across the country, outrage erupted. Political parties accused each other of complicity, and finally, the Supreme Court stepped in to prevent further politicization.
