Tirumala employee sends porn link to devotee, dismissed

Tirumala employee sends porn link to devotee, dismissed

Sandeep.Raghavan@timesgroup.com

Tirupati:12.11.2020

Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams on Wednesday dismissed an employee working for Sri Venkateswara Bhakti channel (SVBC), following an internal inquiry that confirmed he sent a porn link to a devotee, instead of religious material. The incident came to light after the devotee, who received the porn link from the official email handle of SVBC, lodged a plaint with TTD top brass. An inquiry was ordered.

According to an official statement, an employee of the channel allegedly sent the porn link to a Hyderabadbased devotee. The staffer, who has access to the official e-mail of a particular programme on SVBC, was reportedly in a highly inebriated state when he emailed the porn link to the devotee.

The temple body, which engaged the services of IT experts from its vigilance and security wing, was even more shocked when it was found that nearly 30 staffers of SVBC regularly watched TV serials and porn sites on office computers during office hours. When the inquiry officials checked the search history of SVBC office computers, links to several pornographic websites were noticed.

The inquiry team, which has already seized the office computers, is in the process of compiling a preliminary report for submission to SVBC and TTD managements for action against the guilty.

In January actor-turned politician Prudhvi Raj resigned from the chairmanship of SVBC after an audio clip of his ‘intimate’ talks with a woman staffer of the channel went viral. Following Prudhvi Raj’s episode, the temple body revamped the SVBC board and appointed additional EO A V Dharma Reddy as the channel’s managing director.

The official statement said a team of 25 software engineers carried out computer security audit in SVBC and a cyber cell team has been constituted. “During inquiry it was found that a few more employees are also involved in such wilful, indecent conduct. If proved guilty, action will be initiated against them too,” the statement said.

Full report on www.toi.in