GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 10th Feb. Four dairy executives from three states have been arrested in connection with the Tirupati laddoo adulteration case, which sparked nationwide outrage last year. A special Supreme Court-ordered investigation uncovered deliberate contamination in the ghee supplied for making the prasadam.
The arrested individuals include Bipin Jain and Pomil Jain, former directors of Bhole Baba Dairy (Roorkee, Uttarakhand), Vaishnavi Dairy (Poonambakkam, Tamil Nadu) CEO Apoorva Vinay Kant Chawda, and AR Dairy (Dundigal, Telangana) MD Raju Rajasekharan.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) found serious irregularities in the ghee supply chain, revealing that Vaishnavi Dairy had secured tenders in the name of AR Dairy using fabricated documents and seals. Additionally, fake records were created to claim that ghee was sourced from Bhole Baba Dairy, despite the company lacking the capacity to meet the required supply.
Last year, a Gujarat-based lab had detected traces of fish oil, beef tallow, and lard in the ghee samples purchased from a Tamil Nadu supplier, leading to a major controversy. The Andhra Pradesh government flagged the findings, though the lab had issued a disclaimer about “false positives.”
The Supreme Court, condemning the politicization of the issue, directed a high-level probe involving CBI officers, Andhra Pradesh Police, and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). The investigation team confirmed violations in the procurement process, leading to the arrests.
The famed Tirupati kitchen produces nearly three lakh laddoos daily, using approximately 1,500 kg of ghee, along with cashews, raisins, cardamoms, gram flour, and sugar. The case has raised serious concerns over food safety standards in religious offerings.
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