Precious stones found in Tirupati temple

TIRUPATI: As many as 162 precious stones, including diamonds, wrapped in a velvet pouch was found in the 'hundi' of the famous hill shrine of Lord Venkateswara at Tirumala near here, temple sources said today. The sources told PTI the pouch containing high quality precious stones of different sizes, whose worth is expected to be around Rs 1.5 crore, was noticed by the staff of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam when they emptied the hundi for counting the daily collections on Wednesday. The offering by an unknown devotee was sent to the TTD treasury here to ascertain the exact value. The temple hundi is emptied twice daily for counting the offerings including cash, gold, silver and other articles dropped by thousands of devotees, the sources said
The annual income of the over 2000 year old shrine, managed by TTD, crossed Rs 1600 crore mark this year. Of this, cash offering found in the hundi alone was over Rs 600 crore besides gold, silver and other offerings, sources said.