Two brothers-in-law, Anukalp Mishra and Lavkush Mishra, have been arrested for allegedly stealing donations from the Ayodhya Ram Temple, amassing wealth including mansions worth lakhs of rupees despite a meager income, which contradicts their reported financial struggles prior to their involvement in counting temple donations. Anukalp reportedly built a ₹65 lakh farmhouse and purchased a motorcycle, while Lavkush is constructing a ₹25 lakh house and had acquired land worth ₹8.8 lakh. Authorities recovered ₹12 lakh in cash hidden at Lavkush's ancestral home, and investigations are ongoing into the family's finances, with a total of ₹7 crore in donations suspected to be siphoned off, of which only ₹79.85 lakh has been recovered thus far, leading to eight arrests and their 14-day judicial custody, while the Faizabad Bar Association has refused to represent the accused.

Two brothers-in-law, Anukalp Mishra and Lavkush Mishra, have been arrested for allegedly stealing donations from the Ayodhya Ram Temple, amassing wealth including mansions worth lakhs of rupees despite a meager income, which contradicts their reported financial struggles prior to their involvement in counting temple donations. Anukalp reportedly built a ₹65 lakh farmhouse and purchased a motorcycle, while Lavkush is constructing a ₹25 lakh house and had acquired land worth ₹8.8 lakh. Authorities recovered ₹12 lakh in cash hidden at Lavkush's ancestral home, and investigations are ongoing into the family's finances, with a total of ₹7 crore in donations suspected to be siphoned off, of which only ₹79.85 lakh has been recovered thus far, leading to eight arrests and their 14-day judicial custody, while the Faizabad Bar Association has refused to represent the accused.

Two brothers-in-law, Anukalp Mishra and Lavkush Mishra, have been arrested for allegedly stealing donations from the Ayodhya Ram Temple, amassing wealth including mansions worth lakhs of rupees despite a meager income, which contradicts their reported financial struggles prior to their involvement in counting temple donations. Anukalp reportedly built a ₹65 lakh farmhouse and purchased a motorcycle, while Lavkush is constructing a ₹25 lakh house and had acquired land worth ₹8.8 lakh. Authorities recovered ₹12 lakh in cash hidden at Lavkush's ancestral home, and investigations are ongoing into the family's finances, with a total of ₹7 crore in donations suspected to be siphoned off, of which only ₹79.85 lakh has been recovered thus far, leading to eight arrests and their 14-day judicial custody, while the Faizabad Bar Association has refused to represent the accused.

Anukalp Mishra, 20, and his brother-in-law Lavkush Mishra, 27, who have been arrested in connection with stealing donations from Ayodhya Ram Temple, have reportedly built mansions worth several lakhs of rupees despite having a meagre income.

Salary of Ram Temple employees was revised from ₹15,000 to ₹20,000 in 2023, according to Telegraph India. Even after considering this revised income, both Anukalp and Lavkush could not have built such lavish mansions.

The Mishra household was struggling financially before Anukalp and Lavkush were tasked with counting of cash and valuables received as donations at the temple, reports NDTV.

Anukalp has reportedly build a farmhouse worth ₹65 lakh on the outskirts of his native Basava village. He already had a motorcycle worth ₹1 lakh and allegedly booked a Mahindra Scorpio.

Anukalp was working with the counting team through a bank's outsourcing agency. Later, Lavkush joined the donation counting team at the Ayodhya temple with Anukalp's help.

Lavkush was in the process of constructing a large house in Basava village. He had bought a plot worth ₹8.8 lakh near the Ayodhya-Lucknow Highway and a two-storey house worth ₹25 lakh is currently under construction there.

Police have recovered ₹12 lakh in cash hidden under a heap of cow dung at Lavkush's ancestral home in Milkipur, Ayodhya. Investigators are checking the Mishra family's property documents, bank transactions etc to verify whether their recent acquisitions were made through legitimate earnings.

A total of ₹7 crore worth of donations have been siphoned off from Ayodhya Ram Temple. The investigators could only recover Rs 79.85 lakh so far.

Besides Anukalp and Lavkush, the remaining accused were identified as Avinash Shukla, Manish Kumar Yadav, Karunesh Pandey, Ram Shankar Mishra, Subhash Srivastava and Ramashankar alias Tinnu Yadav. The charges slapped on the accused include Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions related to theft by servant, criminal breach of trust, receiving stolen property and criminal conspiracy as well as Prevention of Corruption Act.

An Ayodhya court on Monday remanded all eight accused in the embezzlement case to 14 days judicial custody.

In an interesting development, the Faizabad Bar Association unanimously decided not to take up the case of the accused.

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