Police are on the hunt for a group of priests belonging to the Devalaganapur temple located in the Kalaburagi district of Karnataka who are accused in a heist worth crores of rupees. The priests allegedly built fake websites in the name of the temple which invited devotees to pay donations.

The police have booked 5 priests who haven’t been caught yet. The priests made 8 fake websites in the operation. The websites had titles pretending to be the temple, like Shri Kshethra Dattatreya, Ganagapur Dattatreya, and Dattatreya Devalay. Sri Dattatreya is the name of the Devalaganapur temple’s deity. 

The police say that they swindled around Rs 20 crore over the last 4 years from the many devotees of the temple which come from all over Karnataka and also Telangana and Maharashtra. The money was transferred to the personal bank accounts of the priests, it said. 

The websites also charged fees ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000 for performing ritual activities and poojas. The devotees were managed by individual priests who also gave receipts with their mobile numbers. Around 2,000 devotees were duped in the scam, media reports cited initial reports from cyber forensics. 

The temple, which lies in the Afzalpur taluk in the north of the state comes under the Muzurai department. The scam came to light after it was spotted during an audit conducted recently. Authorities then registered a case with the police. It is also suspected that money was stolen from the donation boxes at the place of worship. 

The police said that the CCTV cameras were found to be masked or diverted when it was the day of donation counting. The Deputy Commissioner of Kalaburgi has ordered the money to be recovered.

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