As the month of Shravan begins, there is a huge crowd of devotees at Nashik's Trimbakeshwar Temple. This temple, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas in the country, receives about 20,000 devotees daily. The trust provides passes for darshan in the form of a donation of 200 rupees. However, it has come to light that there is a black market for these passes, and the police have arrested a gang of five people in this case.
This gang booked a large number of passes using fake names, mobile numbers, and IDs from the official website of the temple trust. They sold these passes for between 500 to 1000 rupees. The gang had a WhatsApp group called “Direct Khatla” where ticket information was shared among each other. The police have uncovered this gang's activities during the investigation and are gathering more information from them.
The Devasthan Trust has also taken serious note of this. Trustee Purushottam Kadlag stated that there is no identity verification system on the website, which made the fraud possible. Therefore, technical improvements will be made to the website by the trust.
The police suspect that there is a larger network operating behind this gang, and have warned that this issue could pose a significant threat to security systems, not just remain a financial misconduct.