Tirupati Trust gets 68 lakh kg 'fake ghee' from dairy that never procured milk: probe finds shocking details

Sri Venkateswara temple in Tirupati

In a shocking revelation, the CBI’s special investigation team (SIT) has uncovered that a dairy based in Uttarakhand supplied massive quantities of ghee to the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) without ever purchasing milk or butter from any source. According to the remand report submitted to a Nellore court, between 2019 and 2024, Bhole Baba Organic Dairy -- run by its promoters Pomil Jain and Vipin Jain from Bhagawanpur -- managed to deliver around 68 lakh kilograms of ghee valued at Rs 250 crore to the TTD.

According to reports, the SIT discovered this during its investigation into the alleged adulteration of ghee used in the iconic Tirupati Laddu prasadam. The breakthrough came after the arrest of accused supplier Ajay Kumar Sugandh, who provided chemicals such as monodiglycerides and acetic acid ester to the dairy. “The dairy never procured a drop of milk or butter, yet created fake procurement and payment records to project large-scale ghee production,” noted the investigators in their report.

Even after Bhole Baba Organic Dairy was blacklisted by the TTD in 2022, its promoters continued to supply adulterated ghee by using other fronts. The CBI stated that they routed supplies through multiple dairies, including Tirupati-based Vyshnavi Dairy, Uttar Pradesh’s Mal Ganga, and AR Dairy Foods from Tamil Nadu, say reports.

In a particularly shocking instance, four containers of ghee adulterated with animal fat -- originally supplied by AR Dairy and rejected by the TTD in July 2024 -- were later found to have re-entered the system. The report revealed that “the rejected ghee stocks were supplied back to the Tirupati trust by Bhole Baba promoters through Vyshnavi Dairy.”

When the SIT and FSSAI officials inspected AR Dairy’s Dindigul plant, they found that the four tankers “never returned to the AR facility” but were diverted to a nearby stone-crushing unit close to Vyshnavi Dairy’s premises. By August 2024, Vyshnavi Dairy allegedly changed the truck labels, refined the synthetic ghee’s quality and texture, and dispatched it once again to the TTD under its existing supplier contract.

According to the CBI, the same batch of ghee was subsequently used in preparing the revered Tirupati Laddu prasadams, linking the adulterated supplies directly to the temple’s sacred offerings.