2 Endowments Department Panels, Police Investigating 60 Kgs Tamarind Theft At Yadagirigutta

The theft was discovered 15 days ago. Though the missing tamarind did not have any impact on the preparation of the daily ‘Pulihora prasadam’ first offered to the deity and then distributed among the pilgrims.

Every day, the temple kitchen used around 800 kg of tamarind for preparing between 15,000 and 20,000 pulihora sachets. The kitchen has a staff of 92 people.

The incident was enough to prompt Devasthanam to set up a high-level committee to probe the incident. And even as the police investigation into the theft following a complaint by the temple officials continued, the Endowments Department stepped in setting up its own high-level committee headed by its additional commissioner to find the tamarind thieves.

It also rushed the team to the temple two days ago, following the receipt of an initial report from the temple set up committee, for an on-the-spot inquiry into the theft of the vital ingredient of the Pulihora Prasadam.

Though police investigating the case have made progress and identified two persons working in the temple kitchen, and took them to the Yadadri police station, this tangy case for now continued to be under the wraps.

When contacted, Yadadri Sub-Inspector G Uday Kiran said, “It was the police who found the two persons working on an outsourcing basis in the temple kitchen stealing tamarind and brought them to the police station and took up further investigation.” The two persons were employed by an agency to work in the kitchen.

Several devotees began questioning the Devasthanam’s approach to the case asking if two high-level committees to find out who stole 60 kg of tamarind were required when there were several other problems plaguing the temple, which are not being attended to.

Instead of wasting the time of multiple officials on a case like this, the Devasthanam and Endowments Department should focus on improving pilgrim amenities, the devotees said.

The devotees said that they were forced to wait in queue for over three hours to complete darshan. When the temple was reopened after its reconstruction, a proposal was mooted to adopt Tirupati queue system but nothing concrete has been done in this regard.

The devotees said the Endowments Department was only wasting time on constituting committees in the name of probing the tamarind theft case. “One panel from the department side is sufficient to look into the issue as the police are already investigating it. What is the need to set up another high-level committee?” a devotee asked.