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What the SIT report on Ram temple donation theft does and does not say
Examining 45 days of CCTV footage from the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a Special Investigation Team set up by the Uttar Pradesh government found 70 instances of counting staff hiding bundles of notes and loose cash in their clothes, pockets and shoes.
Tasked with investigating donation theft at the temple, the SIT submitted a preliminary report to the state’s home department on June 23. Scroll has seen a copy of the report.
The report details how offerings at the temple were stolen during the counting process, with staff routinely hiding cash on their bodies and walking out with it, as systems meant to stop this were not enforced.
The reports flags serious lapses by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra, the trust that runs the temple, and the State Bank of India, the banker to the trust.
It pins blame for the dilution of the security protocol in the counting room on trustee Anil Mishra, a prominent local leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. However, it does not recommend any action against him.
While it does not name Champat Rai, the general secretary of the trust, one of his aides is among the eight staffers that it recommends that the police investigate. The same men have been named as the accused in a first information report filed by the police on June 25.
The three-member SIT was formed on June 13 on the request of the temple trust after Opposition leaders and a whistleblower raised questions about how donations were being handled at the temple.
It is expected to submit a final report on July 22.
The SIT's strongest evidence comes from CCTV footage of the counting room, located in a building within the temple complex. The SIT said that it had access to only 45 days of recordings, from April 27 to June 5, 2026.
The trust’s own internal audits, covering 2022-’23 to 2025-’26, recommended the preservation of 180 days of footage. “However, Trust officials did not take these reports seriously and ignored the audit findings, which led to the present problem,” the report stated.
In the available CCTV footage, the SIT found 70 instances of counting staff hiding bundles of notes and loose cash in their clothes, pockets and shoes.
Two staffers, Avinash Shukla and Manish Kumar Yadav, were seen repeatedly siphoning off money in the footage, according to the report. Three others, Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra and Karunesh Pandey, were seen assisting them. A sixth, Ramashankar Mishra, was also caught on camera hiding cash, the report states.
The SIT said that bank records of the accused and witness statements suggest that similar thefts were happening even earlier, but without CCTV footage, the scale could not be verified.
It added that the accused were hired by a firm contracted by the State Bank of India on the recommendation of the officials of the Ram temple trust.
The SIT also emphasised the absence of basic safeguards during the counting of cash donations. It alleged that counting staff were not frisked at entry or exit and that they were allowed to carry mobile phones and personal belongings into the room.
While a pocket-less uniform had been prescribed for counting staff to prevent concealment and theft, the rule was never enforced, and neither the trust nor the bank noticed or acted on this.
The report added that coins and cash from different donation boxes, or hundis, were mixed before counting, making it impossible to trace donations to a specific box. “Given the very large quantity of public donations received, this situation proved to be a serious weakness from the point of view of audit and accountability,” it said.
Ramshankar Yadav, alias Tinnu, an aide of Champat Rai, had keys to these donation boxes “without any clear written order”.
“Any person having custody of the keys to the offering boxes without formal authority creates a risk of unauthorised access,” added the report, pinning this problem on Subhash Srivastava, an RSS leader in Ayodhya in-charge of the counting room.
The SIT said that before it was formed, trust officials had already recovered close to Rs 78.94 lakh from the accused. It also mentions recovery of foreign currency, jewellery and Rs 2.25 lakh from a bathroom next to the counting room.
It added that registers maintained by the trust had records of precious offerings by the Indian Bullion and Jewellers Association, Vishwa Sindhi Seva Samaj, a Sarafa association, and businessman Anil Vishwakarma, which included a silver necklace, silver footwear and hundreds of kilos of silver bricks. The necklace and the shoe were found to be in the trust’s custody while the bricks had been sent to the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India to be melted, a record of which was maintained by the trust.
The SIT’s preliminary report puts the spotlight on Anil Mishra, a former executive head of RSS in the Awadh region, and a member of the temple trust. As a representative of the trust, Mishra signed off on a security protocol with the State Bank of India, the temple’s banker, on February 6, 2025.
The SIT notes that this protocol actually diluted a safeguard that the trust and the bank had agreed upon in September 2024, which mandated that every person entering or leaving the counting room be checked by a guard. Instead, the new protocol allowed for “regular or random” checks, which were then not carried out at all.
“The issue of frisking not being carried out was also brought to his [Mishra’s] attention through internal channels,” the report states. “Despite this, no effective written instruction was issued to implement the search arrangement.”
The SIT held Mishra held responsible for recommending Srivastava as the in-charge of the counting room, under whose supervision the thefts took place.
“Based on the available material, his [Mishra’s] role does not remain limited to mere administrative negligence, but appears to be a factor involving gross negligence, serious failure to comply with necessary security measures, creating conditions that facilitated the act of theft/ embezzlement, and providing facilitation to it,” said the report.
Despite the harsh indictment, the SIT did not recommend any action against Mishra in its concluding suggestions.
The report is equally direct about the State Bank of India, which was a signatory to the counting arrangement with the trust.
Under a Memorandum of Understanding that the bank signed with the trust in February 2024, its role went beyond receiving the counted money. The bank was responsible, along with the trust, for supervising counting staff, ensuring counting machines were available, and enforcing security compliance.
The SIT found that the bank did not provide staff with the prescribed uniform and that there was no monthly rotation of its officials at the counting site, which was meant to happen.
The preliminary report’s gaps are as notable as the findings. While the SIT holds Mishra responsible at a “senior supervisory level”, it recommends FIRs only against the eight staffers. This includes counting officials Avinash Shukla, Manish Kumar Yadav, Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Karunesh Pandey, Ramashankar Mishra, counting-in-charge Subhash Srivastava, and Ramshankar Yadav alias Tinnu.
Champat Rai, the trust's general secretary and its most senior functionary, does not feature anywhere in the nine-page document, despite the trust's responsibility for the counting process being a running theme throughout the report.
The role of Gopal Nagarkatte, an RSS leader who assumed administrative role at the trust in 2021, is also not part of the findings.
Source: Scroll
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