Attested seva is a prayer performed at a place of worship on someone else's behalf by a named, verified person who returns evidence that it happened: GPS-tagged photographs, a short video, prayer audio where recording is permitted, and a handwritten note, usually the same day.
| Term | attested seva |
|---|---|
| Also called | witnessed seva, seva by proxy, proxy prayer with proof |
| Where | Any place of worship in India that can be searched for, not a partner catalogue |
| Who performs it | A named, verified Sevak, accountable for that seva |
| What returns | GPS-tagged photographs, a short video, prayer audio where permitted, a handwritten note |
| When | Usually the same day, where the place's own schedule allows it |
| Faiths | Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian |
| Cost | Sevas start at ₹251; a full seva is ₹899 |
Prayer at a distance is old. Families have asked a cousin who still lives near the village temple, sent money to a panda in Kashi, or written to a shrine for as long as people have moved away from the places they pray at. None of that is new, and Sevahey did not invent it.
What has never reliably existed is the attested part: a way to know it actually happened. Money sent into silence is the normal experience of proxy prayer, and the ordinary outcome is that you hope. Attestation is the difference between hoping a prayer was offered and holding a photograph with the coordinates and the hour on it, a recording of the chant, and a note in the hand of the person who stood there.
It is not a catalogue of famous temples. The place can be the small mandir at the end of your lane, and around 1.2 million places of worship in India are searchable this way.
It is not a reselling of anything a temple already sells. Where a temple, gurudwara or dargah runs its own booking for a ritual, a permit or a room, Sevahey names that body's portal and stays out of the way. And it is not a promise about outcomes: the full list of what Sevahey cannot do is published rather than left to be found out.
Attested seva is a prayer performed at a place of worship on someone else's behalf by a named, verified person who returns evidence that it happened: GPS-tagged photographs, a short video, prayer audio where recording is permitted, and a handwritten note, usually the same day.
An online puja app books a puja at one of its partner temples, where a temple pandit performs it and a personalised video is sent to you afterwards. Attested seva is not limited to a catalogue: the place can be any place of worship that can be searched for, including a village shrine no app has ever partnered with. The person who goes is named, verified, and accountable for that specific seva rather than anonymous, and what comes back is evidence with a location and a time on it rather than a keepsake video.
A temple's own portal sells you the temple's ritual, performed by the temple, usually requiring you to attend. Attested seva sends a person to the place on your behalf when you cannot go yourself. The two are not competitors: where a temple runs its own booking, Sevahey names that portal and does not resell it.
Families living outside India who cannot reach the place their family has always prayed at, people caring for someone in hospital, devotees marking a birthday, an anniversary, an exam, a surgery, or a death anniversary, and families keeping a regular seva at an ancestral shrine in a village nobody has lived in for years.
Photographs taken on site carrying the coordinates and the time they were captured, around thirty seconds of unedited video of the offering itself, the chant or prayer as audio where recording is permitted, and a note written by hand by the Sevak carrying the name the seva was offered for. Where a place of worship restricts photography, that is stated before payment and the proof takes another form rather than the rule being broken.
Proxy puja is the older and broader term for any prayer performed on another person's behalf, and it long predates any app. Attested seva is the narrower thing: proxy prayer where the performer is named and verified and the performance is evidenced. Every attested seva is a proxy prayer; most proxy prayer is not attested, because nothing comes back that shows it happened.
Sevahey arranges seva at Hindu temples, Muslim mosques and dargahs, Sikh gurudwaras, and Christian churches: an archana or abhishek, a dua with a chaadar offered, an ardas and langar seva, a mass intention or a candle lit. The partner-temple apps in this category are Hindu only.
It does not include reselling a temple's own ticket, permit, or room booking, does not include performing a Sikh path, does not include prasad delivery yet, does not include astrology, and does not include any promise about the outcome of a prayer. Sevahey publishes the full list of its limits rather than leaving them to be discovered.