Naidu orders probe into jewellery ‘theft’

The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to order a judicial inquiry by a high court judge into the allegations of disappearance and theft of antique jewellery worth hundreds of crores of rupees at the Venkateswara Temple in Chittoor district’s Tirumala.

CM N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday wrote a letter to the Hyderabad high court acting chief justice Ramesh Ranganathan requesting him to appoint a sitting high court judge ‘to take stock of the allegations, verify the records, inspect the jewellery, ornaments and assets, scrutinise the procedures in vogue and place a report in the public domain’.

Naidu said the state government had ordered inquiries by two independent judicial commissions – one by justice Jagannatha Rao in 2009 and the other by justice Wadhwa in 2011 for verification of the jewellery, when there were instances of maligning the temple and Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), the organisation that manages the country’s richest temple.

“The need has arisen again to dispel fears and apprehensions of millions of devotees across the comprehensive verification by a sitting high court judge, as the sensitivity of the issue reached alarming proportions and any amount of counter justification that all is well either by the TTD or the government is unable to provide solace to the public at large and devotees in particular,” he said.

Naidu’s letter comes after the retired head priest of the temple AV Ramana Deekshitulu last week sought a central inquiry into the alleged financial irregularities in the temple administration, disappearance of antique jewellery, including a pink diamond, worth crores of rupees donated by several kings, and digging of temple kitchen to unearth hidden treasure .

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