The Andhra Pradesh Police, probing the sensational special darshan ticket scam, have pinned the fraud at Rs 34.78 lakhs. After prolonged interrogation, the cops formally arrested three detained in this connection recently and produced them in a court. The three have been identified as M G Kumar, Saravana and Sankaraiah.

The massive-scale special darshan ticket scam was first unearthed in November 2012. It came to light with the arrest of four temporary staffers at the temple, outsourced by Andhra Bank. The fraudsters were found at that time to be selling photocopies of the original tickets, thus hugely denting the TTD’s exchequer.

The TTD vigilance department, which kept a close watch since then, found three other employees indulging in the same fraud early this month. As the vigilance staff and the Tirumala police went on the trail, the much bigger scam was unearthed. The three detained employees were said to have revealed during interrogation that the total loss to the exchequer from the fraud is a whopping Rs 34 lakhs.

It was found that the fake Rs-300 special darshan tickets were produced using colour copiers. In a startling revelation, they told the police that the fraud continued for more than a year before it was busted. In all, they allowed 11,594 devotees using 1,613 fake tickets thus pocketing Rs 34,78,200 in the process. Seeing the scale of the fraud, the police are refusing to rule out the possible involvement of TTD insiders and even some vigilance sleuths.

Producing the three in a Tirupati court, Tirumala police officer Vijaya Sekhar said that more arrests are likely in the case in the near future.