Three booked for selling fake TTD tickets in Andhra Pradesh

TIRUMALA: The Tirumala police on Monday registered a case against three persons for allegedly cheating the pilgrims with fake darshan tickets and extorting huge amounts.

According to Two Town Inspector Chandrasekhar, a pilgrim KP Ravinarayan from Chennai had purchased 18 abhishekam and 10 suprabhatam tickets from Latik and Rahul at Rs 73,000 through his relative Bharat and also had transferred the amount to their account online.

The fraud came to light on December 13 when the TTD (Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams) vigilance sleuths had found that the abhishekam tickets carried by Ravinarayan were fake and questioned him.

After narrating the happenings, Ravinarayan sought some time to verify the facts from his end and at last gave in writing recounting all the facts based on which the TTD vigilance personnel lodged a complaint with the local police on February 5.

The police after having repeatedly failed to establish contacts with all the three accused registered a case. They also appealed to the devotees not to fall prey to touts and middlemen and instead book their tickets on the TTD’s official website only.

Fake ticket racket
Despite the TTD initiating a slew of measures to streamline darshan by plugging loopholes in the most sought-after arjitha seva tickets issuance mechanism, fraudsters are finding new avenues to deceive the gullible devotees By creating fake domains similar to TTD’s official websites, fraudsters have been able to lure devotees to their websites, where devotees unsuspectingly transfer money to obtain the tickets