T
he embezzlement case at Ram Temple of Ayodhya was reported on June 7, and the Uttar Pradesh government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) on June 13 after the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust approached the government for help.
On the basis of initial findings by the SIT, the police filed a first information report (FIR) against eight accused who were involved in counting the donations for the temple. All of those accused were arrested on June 25. The state government has now extended the SIT investigation by 15 days.
The most shocking part of the entire episode is not the theft itself but the amount of riches acquired by the accused in comparison to their income.
The majority of those people charged were employed via an outsourcing firm to do different jobs associated with counting donations in the temple and received salaries of about ₹10,000 to ₹20,000 per month. Nevertheless, according to the asset tracking carried out by the SIT, the purchase of property by them exceeds their salary.
Anukalp Mishra is an outsourced employee in the department of donation counting and receives approximately ₹15,000 per month but has a house worth about ₹65 lakhs, a farmhouse in his native village, a premium motorcycle, and an SUV, which he has booked. Cash of nearly ₹16.8 lakh has been seized from him.
The second contract worker employed by the counting section is Lavkush Mishra, an ex-auto mechanic earning an income of ₹10,000 to ₹12,000 per month who had approximately ₹10 lakh in cash seized from his house. This money was found either stuffed inside a cupboard or even buried under a pile of cow dung. There were two more employees working in the temple and earning an income of ₹18,000 to ₹20,000 per month who came under the scanner due to the acquisition of assets worth ₹1.5 crore and ₹40 lakh, respectively.
These individuals come from diverse backgrounds, which include a school teacher, an auto mechanic, a retiree of a bank, contractual workers, and a loyal aide of a trust officer.
- Tinnu Yadav’s real name is Ramshankar Yadav. He started his career as a personal driver of Trust general secretary Champat Rai but later joined the VIP management team as an aide. The police claim that he had access to the counting rooms as well as boxes without proper permission.
- Ramshankar Mishra, a contract employee working in the counting room handling the cash, had around ₹7.3 lakhs in cash recovered in his possession.
- Subhash Chandra Srivastava, a retired bank employee supervising the counting process shift-wise and identified as a local RSS functionary, is alleged to have failed to check the irregularities.
- Karunesh Pandey, a contract employee recruited by the outsourcing company, was tasked with the opening of donation boxes and cash sorting.
Investigations are also being carried out on the personal relationships that exist amongst the accused; for instance, Anukalp Mishra is believed to be related to the Trust member, Anil Mishra, through family connections, as well as to Lavkush Mishra as brother-in-law.
The scandal continues to grow, as there were reports that the State Bank of India had raised the alarm about issues regarding the cash-counting staff of the temple more than three months before the scandal broke out, recommending replacement of the cash-counting employees. This recommendation was thwarted through the intervention of people related to the Trust.
About ₹80 lakh of cash and foreign currencies have been recovered from six accused till now. On the other hand, the size of the alleged theft has become highly controversial. The leaders of the opposition parties, including Aam Admi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal and Samajwadi Party’s Ram Gopal Yadav, claimed that the embezzlement scandal amounts to hundreds of crores of rupees, in which the amount of cash alone is claimed to be around ₹200 crore along with missing diamonds and jewelry, while one of the opposition leaders has claimed a figure of ₹20,000 crore. In response, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded documentation of these claims from Ayodhya police.
Meanwhile, the SIT also seems to be probing whether the gold ornaments that were donated to the temple by the devotees have been melted into gold biscuits due to difficulty in identifying them, as no search effort yielded the missing articles.
This aspect of the investigation has entailed seeking information from the government-owned mint regarding the consignment of silver that was delivered for testing and questioning temple authorities regarding the stocks of jewelry and other valuable articles that have been received.
One of the members of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, Mahant Dinendra Das Maharaj, has supported the steps taken by the state government in connection with the case, saying that the actions taken so far have been appropriate and that the guilty person should face the severest punishment.
He said that Temple worship and rituals have not been disturbed during the course of the investigation, and the process of handling the donations has become entirely transparent. The trust functionaries named Champat Rai and Anil Mishra are said to have expressed their willingness to resign from their posts considering the increasing pressure on them.
