A silver crown weighing 5 kilograms and two golden rings worth Rs 7.36 lakh gifted to Lord Venkateshwara of Tirumala were found missing from the temple treasury.
The Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam (TTD) board which was unable to trace them has suspended treasury Assistant Executive officer Srinivasulu and ordered recovery at the rate of Rs 25,000 per month from his salary.
The Chittoor district BJP spokesperson G Bhanu Prakash Reddy, however, said that TTD came to know about the missing of valuable items in October 2017. “They punished the officer-in-charge without looking into the reasons why and how the crown and two gold rings went missing from the treasury,” he alleged.
He demanded a judicial inquiry and asked the TTD to file a police complaint and initiate criminal proceedings. Party secretary Samanchi Srinivas announced that a demonstration will be held in front of the TTD administrative building on Wednesday if the top authorities failed to respond.
The theft came to light during the annual verification of items in the treasury. The suspended officer, however, had asked the TTD, in 2018 and again this year, to wait till the final tally of the items in the treasury was submitted. He argued that the ornaments might have been misplaced or wrongly counted or evaluated.
TTD Executive officer Anil Kumar Singhal told the media in Tirumala on Tuesday that he has ordered for another round of count of the items in treasury. He said that 11 kilograms of silver found in excess in the verification process has been deposited in the treasury.
In the month of February this year, three crowns belonging to the processional deities at Sri Govindaraja Swamy temple in Tirupati went missing. Priests at one of the 18 sub-temples in Sri Govindaraja Swamy temple noticed the three diamond-studded golden crowns missing when the temple was briefly closed for some rituals.