A video is being shared on social media claiming it as recent visuals of the Income-tax department seizing 128 kgs of gold, 150 crore rupees cash, and 70 crore worth diamonds from one of the 16 trustee members of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) Board. A few other social media posts claim the raided trustee as J. Sekar Reddy and also, shared a photo of him in their posts. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video showing the seized jewellery from TTD Board member J. Sekar Reddy’s house.
Fact: The video shared in the post is related to a recent jewellery robbery in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. On the midnight of 14 December 2021, 15 kgs of gold and almost 500 gms of diamonds was robbed from the Jos Alukkas showroom in Vellore. The Tamil Nadu Police recovered all the lost jewellery and arrested the culprit Deekaraman. In 2016, the Income Tax Department officials raided the residences of the then TTD Board member J Sekar Reddy and seized ₹100 crores cash and 120 kg gold. However, the case filed by the CBI against Sekar Reddy was dismissed by a special court in September 2020 on grounds of lack of evidence after CBI filed a closure report. Sekar Reddy was back on the TTD Board when the cases were closed. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, a video with similar visuals was found in a video published by the ‘Jaya TV’ news channel on 22 December 2021. This news channel reported it as visuals of the recovered jewellery that was robbed recently from the Jos Alukkas showroom in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Reporting the same, several other Tamil news websites have published similar videos on their YouTube channels. They can be seen here and here.
On the midnight of 14 December 2021, 15 kgs of Gold and almost 500 gms of diamonds were robbed from the Jos Alukkas showroom in Vellore. Following an investigation, the Vellore police have recovered all the stolen jewellery buried in a cemetery in Vellore. The police arrested Deekaraman, the culprit who robbed the gold and diamonds from the Jos Alukkas showroom. Reporting the complete details of this robbery, several other news websites have also published articles. Thye can be seen here and here.
In 2016, the Income Tax Department officials raided the residences of the then TTD Board member J Sekar Reddy and seized ₹100 crore cash and 120 kg gold from his houses. The Andhra Pradesh government removed Sekar Reddy as a member of TTD following these IT raids. The case filed by the CBI against Sekar Reddy was dismissed by a special court in September 2020 on grounds of lack of evidence after CBI filed a closure report. Sekar Reddy was back on the TTD Board when the cases were closed. However, he was not included in the new TTD board which was constituted in August 2021. Recently, when a similar post claiming that the IT department conducted a raid on a TTD member went viral on social media, FACTLY published a fact-check article debunking that claim. It can be seen here.
To sum it up, Income-tax officers raided TTD Board member Sekar Reddy’s house in 2016 but the video shared in the post is related to a recent robbery in Vellore.
