ACB seizes 2 kg gold, 6.5 kg silver and cash valued at ₹5 crore from TTD Deputy EO trail

Anti-Corruption Bureau teams on 2 September 2026 raided four premises linked to Mendu Lokanatham, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Deputy Executive Officer currently in charge of the Tirumala temple — one of the most sensitive administrative chairs in the temple town.

Teams led by ACB Deputy Superintendent of Police Srinivasa Rao moved the same day on a residence and a relative’s house in Tirupati, an ancestral home in Yerpedu, and the official’s chambers on the Tirumala hills.

The Tirupati residence in Pedda Kapu Layout is recorded in the spouse’s name. Two house plots and a building at Gollavanigunta stand in the son’s name. The trail also lists a plot at Padiredu Aranyam in Vadamalapet mandal, a plot in Srinivasapuram, and four fixed deposits in relatives’ names. The 2 September filing does not publish the face value of those deposits, and this cutting does not invent it.

What was seized, as published when searches were still under way: 2 kg of gold, 6.5 kg of silver, and cash valued at ₹5 crore. The desk records those figures as the seizure list in the later public filing, not as a completed charge-sheet. No inventory beyond those items has been locked here. No First Information Report number, no Prevention of Corruption Act section list, and no court remand order appear in the record used for this rewrite.

The raid sits on a longer TTD trail. One strand is a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into ghee adulteration. Another is an ACB Visakhapatnam case against K. Chinna Appanna, former personal assistant to then TTD chairman Y.V. Subba Reddy. The 2 September filing does not, in the facts locked for this pack, publish a charge-sheet that names Lokanatham as an accused in those earlier files. It places the Deputy EO’s searches on that trail.

Lokanatham has held various TTD posts, including crucial positions during the previous YSR Congress Party government. In-charge of the Tirumala temple is not a clerical chair: it sits on the hill where pilgrims, contracts, staff posting and ritual logistics concentrate political and financial attention.

Simultaneous searches of a city residence, a relative’s house, an ancestral home and hill-top chambers are a classic ACB pattern: freeze locations before files and lockers can move. That searches were still under way when the later filing went out means readers should treat the 2 kg / 6.5 kg / ₹5 crore list as a same-day seizure report, not as a closed inventory.

What remains unpublished is equally the story. No published valuation of the Gollavanigunta building or the Vadamalapet and Srinivasapuram plots. No published statement from Lokanatham in the locked record. No published list of additional lockers beyond the four relative-name deposits. The public facts for 2 September are the four premises, the named properties and deposits, the gold–silver–cash seizure, the DSP-led teams, the temple in-charge designation, and the CBI ghee and Chinna Appanna strands that form the trail.

For Tirupati’s temple administration, an ACB day on the Deputy EO’s door is not a routine transfer story. It is a test of whether hill-top office and city property will be explained in a charge-sheet, or remain a search-day snapshot. Until a chargesheet or a court order is published, this cutting stops at the locked seizure and the four addresses.