Faith and fraud: Who is responsible for Ayodhya's Ram Temple donation theft?

In April, Champat Rai addressed a gathering that included sangh leaders and religious figures at the annual Ayodhya Parv in Delhi’s Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. The holy city’s renewal, said the general secretary of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, went beyond roads and buildings. It reflected “a continuous process of social and cultural awakening”, he said, with the Ayodhya temple symbolising a national revival rooted in Lord Ram’s ideals.

Few in the audience would have imagined that, within weeks, Rai—the trust’s most powerful official—would have to resign. Allegedly, crores of rupees in donation money had been siphoned off under his watch. Facing mounting criticism, he stepped down on moral grounds. As did trustee Anil Mishra, who had been one of the temple’s most visible faces after serving as principal yajman (host) during the consecration ceremony in 2024.

The exact amount lost might never be known as money was allegedly being removed before it was officially counted. But the more troubling question is: how did the alleged theft continue for weeks inside one of the country’s most secure religious complexes?

The answer lies inside a room rarely seen by devotees. Every day, around 80,000 pilgrims visit the temple and drop cash and jewellery into boxes across the complex. Once opened, the offerings are moved to a secure room where employees count the money.

However, there were reports that the trust itself, during routine checks, suspected that money was being stolen and began an internal audit. To verify this, it installed hidden cameras in the counting room—apparently, the culprits were obstructing the view of the visible cameras.

The issue became public on June 7, when Mahipal Singh, a former temple employee, said there were irregularities in the counting process. He claimed he had informed the trustees, too. Former Ayodhya MLA and Samajwadi Party leader Pawan Pandey took up the matter locally, claiming that more than Rs7 crore had been siphoned off. But it was only after his party president Akhilesh Yadav amplified the charge that the controversy escalated. Opposition parties sensed an opportunity.

Initially, the state government denied the claims, but with growing scrutiny, the trust requested an investigation. On June 13, the government set up a three-member special investigation team. The initial probe found negligence everywhere—supervision, frisking procedures, even CCTV coverage. It recorded nearly 70 instances of theft over about 40 days.

Footage showed individuals repeatedly removing cash while counting. Based on the SIT’s preliminary report, the police filed an FIR on June 25 and arrested eight people, including Champat Rai’s driver Tinnu Yadav. The others were Avinash Shukla, Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Manish Kumar Yadav, Karunesh Pandey, Ramashankar Mishra and Subhash Srivastava. The police also recovered Rs80 lakh in cash.

Meanwhile, the Congress alleged that the State Bank of India, which had outsourced the cash-counting work to an external agency, had asked temple authorities to change staff over suspected irregularities. They were not removed.

Notably, the investigation has not found that Rai personally handled the money or benefited financially. Former principal secretary to the prime minister Nripendra Misra, now chairman of the temple construction committee, vouched for Rai’s integrity and suggested that the temple be managed by a CEO, like it is done at other cash-rich temples in the country.

The question investigators now need to answer is: was this the job of a handful of individuals or is there a deeper administrative weakness? Answering that would require scrutiny of the man who, for more than three decades, had become almost inseparable from the Ram janmabhoomi movement.

As general secretary, Rai oversaw much of the trust’s administration, including construction, day-to-day operations and coordination with government agencies.

According to sources familiar with the investigation, he told the SIT that he was unaware of the alleged theft and that he himself sought an inquiry after the discrepancies came to his notice. Following this, the SIT has examined appointments linked to Rai and Anil Mishra.

Their supporters argue that their resignations signal that no individual was above the temple’s credibility. The Vishva Hindu Parishad, where Rai remains vice president, said that the trust had itself requested the SIT. “When the investigation identified suspects, they sought an FIR. Finally, when Rai’s continued presence could have cast doubt over the probe, he resigned voluntarily,” said VHP working president Alok Kumar. “These steps demonstrated that the trust wanted an impartial investigation.”

Kumar also trashed Akhilesh’s allegations of large-scale theft, saying that the trust’s treasurer, Govind Dev Giri Maharaj, had confirmed that all gold, silver and other valuables were intact. Instead, he said the focus should be on completing a thorough investigation and securing convictions within four or five months, which would restore public confidence in the temple’s management.

The BJP has also adopted a restrained approach. “Public confidence will be restored not through political arguments but through decisive action,” said party spokesperson Gopal Krishna Agarwal. “If wrongdoing has occurred, the state government will investigate it and prosecute everyone responsible. That process is already underway.”

The BJP is acutely aware of what the Ram temple represents. For decades, it was the emotional core of the party’s ideological project. The fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was at the foundation ceremony and the consecration leaves the Centre little room for detachment when controversy erupts. “The party accepted credit when the temple was built. Naturally, when something goes wrong, people also expect responsibility,” said Shashikant Pandey, who teaches political science at Lucknow’s Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University. “There is anger among devotees. People believe such an incident should never have happened at a place like the Ram temple.”

However, he cautioned against sweeping conclusions. “The BJP has one of the country’s strongest organisational networks and continues to have support of voters who see the Ram temple as only one element of a broader record that includes welfare programmes, infrastructure and law and order. Whenever the BJP’s core voters get angry, they realise there is no place to go and they stay within the fold.”

A lot rides on how the Adityanath government and the Centre respond. “The Ram temple is a matter of immense faith,” said Agarwal. “It is an emotional issue, and once appropriate action is taken, it will settle. But ultimately, people also care about livelihood, housing, law and order, infrastructure and the economy. The state government has performed well on those issues.”

For Adityanath, it will be a balancing act. No leader has invested more in projecting Ayodhya as the cultural capital of a new Uttar Pradesh. There has been massive investment in roads, airports, hotels and public infrastructure, with the temple at the centre of this transformation.

While he ordered the SIT and said that faith cannot be protected by shielding wrongdoing, he has also sought to regain the political initiative by bringing up the Krishna janmabhoomi site in Mathura. The message is that while his government would investigate the temple theft, its broader ideological agenda remained unchanged.

The two pillars he has built his image on—law and order, and infrastructure—are both at stake in this case. If he doesn’t deliver on his statement of “sparing no one”, the opposition could turn the assembly elections into a referendum on this issue. Said Samajwadi Party leader Pawan Pandey: “I have appealed to religious leaders to speak out and ask for the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance. It is a welcome step that the accused are being boycotted—the Ayodhya-Faizabad Bar Association has said its members would not represent the accused.”

Notably, the BJP had lost the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Faizabad, which includes Ayodhya. Awadhesh Prasad, the Samajwadi Party’s dalit leader, had defeated the BJP’s Lallu Singh, indicating that residents also cared about displacement and denial of the development pie.

People in religious towns where fast-paced development is taking place also evaluate governments through employment, rehabilitation, compensation, businesses and daily life, said Shashikant Pandey. “The redevelopment transformed the city physically but also displaced shops and homes,” he said. “Tourism has increased dramatically, but not everyone believes its benefits have been distributed equally. The people of Ayodhya visited Ram Lalla long before the new temple. Today the crowds are much larger, but local residents also judge whether their own lives have improved.”

For now, the controversy has produced one unmissable consequence. It has shifted public attention from the temple’s architecture to the less glamorous question of how an institution receiving public donations is actually governed. This will also be a test case for hindutva organisations that campaign hard for the government to give up control of temples.

Perhaps, when the dust settles, this case might show that the answer lies somewhere in between, and might nudge the government to look at the success of richer temples like Vaishno Devi and Tirupati.