Old video of gold seized in robbery case falsely shared as IT raid in residence of Tirupati temple priest

This video shows gold seized from a jewellery store in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, in December 2021

A video is going viral on social media, in which gold ornaments can be seen placed on a large table. It is being claimed that 128 kg of gold and Rs 150 crore cash have been recovered from the priest’s house in Tirupati.

The caption reads, “Can you guess how much money, gold and diamonds were found when the income tax department raided the house of one of the 16 priests serving Tirupati Thimmappa???

128 kg of gold, 150 crores rupees in cash and 70 crores worth of diamonds were found in the home of the priest of Tirupati temple”.

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Fact check

A reverse image search on Google led us to a similar video in a Twitter post from 20 December, 2021. The post claimed that the police had arrested a burglar, who drilled a hole into Vellore’s Jos Alukkas jewellery store and robbed 15 kg of gold and diamond jewellery.

Keeping this in mind, we conducted further keyword search and found media reports. On 21 December, 2021 The Hindu reported that a man was arrested after the police seized 16 kg of jewellery from a graveyard. Unidentified miscreants used a drill to make a hole in the wall of a jewellery shop. The police identified K. Raman, 23, a resident of Kuchipalayam village near Pallikonda, from the shop’s CCTV footage.

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Reports related to the viral video have been published by Tamil news websites on their YouTube channels. These can be seen here and here. The official Twitter account of the Tamil Nadu Police also shared a post about this at the time.

According to an Indian Express report published in December 2016, The Andhra Pradesh government removed J Shekar Reddy, sand mining contractor and partner in SRS Mining, from the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams’ (TTD) Trust Board after income tax raids on the premises of his and his partners in Tamil Nadu unearthed a staggering stash of over Rs 100 crore and gold bars weighing 100 kg.

Taking account of all these evidences we can clearly understand that an old video of gold seized in a robbery case falsely shared as IT raid in residence of Tirupati temple priest.

Conclusion

Fact crescendo discovered that the claim made along with the viral video to be False. This viral video shows gold seized from a jewellery store in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, in December 2021.