Vaishno Devi 'silver' offerings scam: Mint finds toxic fake metal in donations

New Delhi: Every year, millions of devotees trek up the cold Trikuta hills of Jammu & Kashmir clutching coins and ornaments - to offer to the goddess. What they believe they are giving is silver. What the country's own mint says it is receiving is almost entirely something else.

When the Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board recently dispatched roughly 20 tonnes of accumulated silver offerings to a government mint for standard melting and storage, assayers made a discovery that has since set off alarm bells. The metal, which devotees purchased and donated supposedly as silver, contained as little as 5-6% actual silver content, senior officials at the mint aware of the development told ET.

The rest, tests revealed, was cadmium and iron-metals that cost a fraction of silver's price. Cadmium, in fact, is banned for use in consumer goods under Bureau of Indian Standards norms because of carcinogenic fumes it emits.


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The numbers lay bare the scale of the issue. Silver trades at roughly Rs 2,75,000 per kg. Cadmium, a near-identical silver-grey metal to the untrained eye, fetches just Rs 400-500 per kg.

The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board had expected to recover nearly 20 tonnes of silver, equivalent to about Rs 500-550 crore at prevailing prices from devotees' offerings, according to officials at the mint.

Still No Action

Instead, preliminary assays suggest real silver content may be worth barely Rs 30 crore, officials said. No similar contamination is reported at other major religious institutions such as Tirupati, Siddhivinayak, Guruvayur Devaswom or Srikalahasti temple. This suggests that jewellers and vendors who sell silver articles to pilgrims in and around the Vaishno Devi corridor could be the source of the contamination.

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The mint has formally flagged the issue multiple times over the past year, writing to the Jammu & Kashmir Lieutenant Governor's office and the Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board.

As of the time of filing this report, neither office has taken any documented action.

"It is deeply concerning that such unethical practices are being carried out in the vicinity of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi temple duping devotees who purchase silver articles for religious purposes and who are unaware of the presence of cadmium in silver articles, as cadmium closely resembles silver in colour," the mint noted in a letter to LG Manoj Sinha.

ET has seen a copy of the letter.

It flagged the "highly toxic nature of cadmium involving occupational health risks and growing public health concern through pollution of air and water. It is, therefore, imperative to immediately halt production of these silver articles containing cadmium."

Queries sent to the LG and officials of the shrine board remained unanswered at the time of going to press.

A recent batch of about 70 kg of silver alms handed over by the shrine board to the mint for melting contained only 3 kg of genuine silver, a senior official at the mint told ET. "We had to deploy personnel for nearly three months to segregate the material," a senior mint official told ET. "Even then, only small portions showed higher silver content, identified using a handheld device costing about Rs 25 lakh."

More troubling is the presence of cadmium. "Initially, we refused to process the material because of toxic, cancer-causing fumes it could emit," the official said. "After precautionary measures, we procured specialised equipment to control the main adulterated contents of toxic cadmium and very low value iron and went ahead with melting after carefully segregating higher silver-content portions."