How a clerk made a ₹100cr fortune by stealing from India’s richest temple

In the early 1990s, a young CV Ravi Kumar joined the Pedda Jeeyanagar Mutt, which oversees the spiritual affairs of the Lord Venkateswara temple in Tirumala. He was barely in his 20s then. By 2023, aged 54, he was still with the Mutt — working as a clerk and handling one of its most sensitive tasks: supervising the daily counting of donations at the Tirupati Balaji temple, which ranged between ₹4 crore and ₹6 crore every day. For more than three decades, Ravi Kumar’s life seemed routine and uneventful. He came to work, did his job, and went home. Until April 2023, when the facade collapsed overnight.
A security guard watching the CCTV footage noticed Ravi Kumar behaving strangely at the temple’s money-counting hub. A strip search followed, and Ravi Kumar was caught with nine $100 bills tucked between his buttocks.