Investigation into Alleged Donation Thefts at Ram Mandir

The investigation into those alleged donation thefts at the Ram Mandir is finally hitting the top brass of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. It’s not some neat, orderly thing.

Monday, Champat Rai, the former general secretary of the Trust, was pulled in for nearly two hours by Ayodhya Police. They were trying to map out everything the whole chain. How that cash actually moved. From when devotees dropped their money into those donation boxes, all the way through counting it, and finally, getting it deposited in the banks.

This questioning comes long after some people were already arrested for siphoning off temple donations. And now the investigation is blowing wider. It’s dragging bank officials and other Trust functionaries into the mess too.

Police keep saying Rai isn't an accused yet. But he’s more than just a witness, isn't he? He oversaw a lot of the administrative systems managing the temple finances during that whole period being looked at. His statement matters because it might show if this was just some bad individual doing something wrong, or if there were bigger procedural failures lurking underneath.

The core issue is that these cash offerings made by devotees seemed to vanish over time. Allegations surface that staff handling donations deliberately messed with the counting and deposit process. They supposedly diverted money before it ever hit the official bank accounts. It’s a slow bleed, really.

So far, the police have hauled in eight people. They recovered some cash, sure. But the real focus is the figure: nearly seven crore rupees might have been siphoned off over time. That number is where the Special Investigation Team is zeroing in. They found Rs 79.85 lakh during raids linked to those accused. Names like Avinash Shukla, Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Manish Kumar Yadav you see them listed.

But it’s not just about who took the money. The scope expanded way beyond the employees. Investigators are digging into five years of banking records from seven banks. They're looking at CCTV footage too. They even questioned State Bank of India officials. Why? To figure out if the supervisory gap allowed this whole thing to happen in the first place.

They issued notices to Trust members, Anil Mishra and Gopal Rao, as part of this dragnet.

And that’s where Rai’s testimony becomes crucial. The police were really pushing on four big questions with him.

The main focus? How exactly did they handle the Standard Operating Procedure for donations? They wanted a step-by-step account. How did cash move after it landed in those boxes? Who opened them? Who was there when counting happened? How was everything checked? Documented? Packed up? And finally, how did that pile of cash end up in the bank accounts?

They’re trying to see if any step in this whole flow had weak spots. Rai explained what procedures were supposedly in place during his time running things for receiving and depositing donations.

Then came accountability. They pressed him on who was actually doing what. Who had administrative control over the whole system? Who supervised those counting teams? Who kept the records straight? Who was supposed to be authorized to move cash to the banks?

The answers, they hope, will tell them if people were clearly assigned roles, or if there were just holes in supervision that let this fraud slide.

Another angle is what happened internally before everything blew up publicly. Did the Trust ever spot weirdness? Did internal checks, audits, or routine verifications show discrepancies? Were there any complaints floating around? The police are looking at the timeline now. When did the suspicions even start to form? What was the reaction then?

Since they’re touching banking stuff, they also asked about how the Trust dealt with the banks themselves. After the cash left the temple gates, what happened next? Documentation? Deposit rules? Coordination with bank clerks? This is happening while they examine those SBI officials and hunt for records across multiple banks to match what was counted inside versus what actually landed in accounts.

The whole investigation seems to be shifting focus. It’s moving away from just pinning it on a few bad actors. Now, it’s about whether the system itself failed. The Special Investigation Team already pointed toward broken procedures. But they keep digging through bank ledgers and footage, trying to see if this was some isolated conspiracy or proof of massive institutional blindness in financial oversight.

Right now, Rai’s statement is being treated like a key piece. It's how the police are trying to reconstruct how one of India’s most watched religious spots handled the daily stream of money from millions of devotees. It’s messy. It’s complicated. And it’s definitely moving fast.