Ram Mandir Donation Scam: Court Sends All 8 Accused to 3-Day Judicial Custody

Ayodhya (IANS): A local magistrate’s court on Friday remanded all eight individuals arrested in connection with the alleged misappropriation of Ram Mandir donations to a three-day judicial custody. The suspects will remain in jail until June 29, and authorities will produce them before the city court again on Monday.

The police are now preparing to seek a police remand to interrogate the accused. Investigators want to ascertain how the suspects hatched and executed the plan to embezzle crores of rupees from devotees’ offerings.

Because of the public holiday for Muharram, police produced the suspects before the Magistrate’s Court, which ordered their transfer to judicial custody.

Trust Official Lodges Complaint

Authorities booked a total of eight accused for alleged theft at the temple and subsequently arrested them all. The Ayodhya Kotwali police station registered the FIR on Thursday, acting on a complaint from Krishna Mohan, a member of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

The case names several individuals, including:

• Ramshankar Yadav (alias Tinnu), who is associated with temple management.
• Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Manish Yadav, Karunesh Pandey, Ramashankar Mishra, and Avinash Shukla, all Trust employees.
• Subhash Srivastava, a retired bank employee.

The police filed the case shortly after a three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) flagged several irregularities at multiple levels in its preliminary report.

Police Lean on Interrogations and CCTV

The police state that they will uncover the entire embezzlement plot through detailed interrogations and CCTV evidence. If the investigation reveals more names, authorities will take action against them as well.

The preliminary probe highlights the specific roles that each accused played at various levels, putting the role of Ramshankar Yadav alias Tinnu Yadav under intense scrutiny.

The police are also probing the alleged dubious appointment process of the cash-counting staff. They want to identify the key recruiter and determine how the retired banking employee helped siphon off the offerings through banking channels. Police officials added that during the upcoming remand period, sustained interrogation will help them piece together the full chain of events.