According to the remand report submitted to a Nellore court, the investigation began into the alleged adulteration of ghee used in the preparation of the iconic Tirupati Laddu prasadam. Investigators achieved a breakthrough with the arrest of a key accused supplier, Ajay Kumar Sugandh, who admitted to providing the dairy with chemicals such as monodiglycerides and acetic acid ester. The SIT explicitly noted in their report that the dairy “never procured a drop of milk or butter, yet created fake procurement and payment records to project large-scale ghee production.”

The alarming details of the scam did not end even after the dairy was officially blacklisted by the TTD in 2022. The CBI found that the promoters of Bhole Baba Organic Dairy simply continued to supply their adulterated ghee by operating through various front dairies. The report states that supplies were routed through multiple entities, including Tirupati-based Vyshnavi Dairy, Uttar Pradesh’s Mal Ganga, and AR Dairy Foods from Tamil Nadu, effectively circumventing the blacklisting and continuing the fraudulent operation.

In one particularly egregious instance of fraud and public endangerment, a rejected consignment of four containers of ghee was successfully re-introduced into the temple’s supply chain. The rejected ghee, which had been adulterated with animal fat and supplied by AR Dairy in July 2024, was found to have been supplied back to the Tirupati trust by the Bhole Baba promoters using Vyshnavi Dairy as the channel. This indicated a brazen and sophisticated attempt to ensure the consumption of rejected, adulterated product.