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Four men, who head three dairies in three states, have been arrested in connection with the Tirupati laddoo adulteration case that had shocked the country last year. The investigation by a special team set up the Supreme Court after a massive controversy, has uncovered the details of the deliberate contamination.
Those arrested 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 investigation revealed serious violations during ghee supply, with irregularities at every step.
For the supply of ghee, representatives of Vaishnavi Dairy secured tenders in the name of AR Dairy, said sources in the Central Bureau of Investigation. They fabricated false documents and seals, using the name of AR Dairy to manipulate the tender process.
Employees of Vaishnavi Dairy also created fake records claiming they have sourced ghee from Bhole Baba Dairy in Roorkee. The investigators found that Bhole Baba Dairy did not have the capacity to supply such quantities of ghee.
The team identified the irregularities and arrested four individuals from three dairies.
Allegations that ghee adulterated with animal fat are being use to make the laddoos for prasadam at the Tirupati exploded across headlines last year, sparking a massive row that speedily became political.
The Andhra government had red-flagged a report from a lab in Gujarat that said samples of the the ghee bought from a supplier in Tamil Nadu's Dindigul contained traces of fish oil, beef tallow, and lard. The lab also added a disclaimer about "false positives".
The Supreme Court slammed the mix of religion and politics and ordered a special team be formed to investigate the animal fat allegations.
The special team comprised two CBI officers, two Andhra Pradesh Police personnel, and a senior official from the centre-run Food Safety and Standards Authority.
The kitchen at Tirupati makes around three lakh laddoos daily, with around 1,500 kg of ghee and vast amounts of cashew nuts, raisins, cardamoms, gram flour, and sugar used.