Only eight counting-room staff were arrested in the Ayodhya Ram Mandir donation theft case because overwritten CCTV servers limited the Special Investigation Team to a 39-day footage window, while classifying former executives Champat Rai and Anil Mishra’s oversight lapses as non-criminal, and Section 20 of the CAG Act exempts the privately funded trust from public audits.
Why Were Only Eight Staff Arrested in the Ayodhya Ram Mandir Donation Theft Case?
Prosecutors charged only eight counting-room employees in the Ayodhya Ram Mandir donation theft case because the temple’s closed-circuit television (CCTV) servers overwrote all video before April 27, 2026, leaving investigators with a 39-day footage window that prevented them from quantifying earlier cash thefts.
Although internal audit standards called for 180 days of camera storage, only 39 days of footage, running from April 27 to June 5, 2026, remained on the hard drives when the Uttar Pradesh Special Investigation Team (SIT) arrived. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) is a specialized multidisciplinary inquiry panel appointed by a state government or court to investigate complex criminal or financial cases.
That 39-day retention window set the prosecution’s legal boundary. According to the preliminary Special Investigation Team (SIT) report authored by Uttar Pradesh Special Secretary (Finance) Neel Ratan, employee statements and bank account deposits that exceeded their known salaries indicated that cash siphoning had occurred before April 27, 2026. The report noted prima facie suspicion that the accused used stolen funds to buy movable and immovable properties, but the absence of pre-April video records prevented investigators from quantifying the earlier thefts under criminal evidence standards.
Within the surviving 39-day window, the initial visual inspection identified 70 separate clips showing staff members pocketing currency notes from open offering boxes, known as hundis. After the Supreme Court of India ordered the addition of a Chartered Accountant forensic auditor to the SIT on July 27, 2026, a frame-by-frame review submitted to the Supreme Court on September 21, 2026 increased the count of verified theft incidents by 50%, from 70 clips to 105 clips inside that same April 27–June 5 period.
The physical inquiry began after temple security recovered ₹2.25 lakh in unaccounted cash hidden inside a bathroom adjacent to the counting hall on June 4, 2026, according to the SIT preliminary report. On June 23, 2026, the state-appointed SIT submitted its initial inspection findings, prompting Trustee Krishna Mohan to file a formal police complaint at the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi police station.
On June 25, 2026, Ayodhya police registered a First Information Report (FIR) under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), India’s criminal code that replaced the Indian Penal Code, for criminal breach of trust, cheating, theft, and conspiracy, alongside Section 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. According to the Ayodhya police FIR records, officers arrested eight counting-room and support personnel on June 26, 2026, and recovered nearly ₹80 lakh in cash from seven of them:
- Subhash Chandra Srivastava: A retired bank employee hired to supervise daily cash counting inside the temple complex.
- Ram Shankar Yadav (“Tinnu Yadav”): A long-time aide and chauffeur to Trust General Secretary Champat Rai involved in transporting and guarding offerings.
- Manish Kumar Yadav: Nephew of Ram Shankar Yadav, who started working in the counting room on April 15, 2026, and was captured stealing on CCTV from May 11, 2026 onward, according to the SIT report.
- Anukalp Mishra and Lavkush Mishra: Relatives of Trustee Dr. Anil Mishra who worked on the daily counting floor.
- Karunesh Pandey, Ramashankar Mishra, and Avinash Shukla: Counting-team staff assigned to sort currency notes, log donation receipts, and bundle cash for bank deposit.
How Did the UP SIT Report on the Ayodhya Temple Theft Clear Champat Rai and Anil Mishra?
The August 17, 2026 UP SIT report on the Ayodhya temple theft cleared former Trust executives Champat Rai and Dr. Anil Mishra of criminal liability by classifying the non-enforcement of their February 6, 2025 cash-counting guidelines as an administrative supervisory lapse rather than criminal abetment.
One day after the eight arrests, on June 26, 2026, Trust General Secretary Champat Rai and Trustee Dr. Anil Mishra submitted their resignations from the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra, the 15-member public religious trust established in February 2020 to construct and manage the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. Neither former office-bearer was named as an accused when the SIT prepared its 74,000-page criminal chargesheet ahead of the September 25, 2026 statutory deadline.
The SIT separated the executives from the criminal prosecution by distinguishing physical cash lifting from protocol oversight. According to the preliminary SIT report text, Dr. Anil Mishra had signed a formal cash-handling agreement with the State Bank of India on September 20, 2024, followed by a set of internal “Jointly Formed Guidelines” on February 6, 2025.
Those February 6, 2025 Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), written step-by-step rules governing financial custody, required four specific safeguards inside the counting room:
- Preparing denomination-wise currency records, vouchers, and certificates at the end of every shift.
- Counting each hundi separately rather than mixing offerings from multiple boxes.
- Enforcing biometric thumb-scan attendance and prohibiting food, beverages, and personal items inside the vault area.
- Depositing gold and silver valuables into Hundi No. 12 inside the counting room, to be opened jointly at regular intervals with the item type and weight recorded.
None of those four safeguards were enforced on the floor. The SIT documented that staff mixed cash from separate boxes without denomination certificates, biometric attendance was never activated, bank-level SOP duties went unfulfilled, and private guards deployed by Security and Intelligence Services (SIS) outside the counting room entrance failed to conduct regular or random physical searches.
“The investigation revealed that the above-mentioned security measures were not actually followed. This was not merely a technical or procedural error, but rather deliberate negligence, which led to the theft/embezzlement,” the SIT stated in its preliminary report.
Instead of treating that breakdown as criminal conspiracy under the June 25 FIR, the state panel treated the failure to enforce the February 2025 rules as an internal management failure. On August 17, 2026, the Uttar Pradesh Home Department handed the SIT’s final report directly to the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, recommending stricter compliance with the joint Trust–State Bank of India SOPs.
At a meeting in Ayodhya on July 6, 2026, the Trust accepted the Champat Rai Anil Mishra resignation letters on grounds of moral responsibility, removed its special invitee, named Trustee Krishna Mohan as interim general secretary, and formed a three-member selection committee to recruit a Chief Executive Officer.
“The magnitude of the theft, whether small or large, is secondary. What pains us is that such an atmosphere developed here. It is our responsibility to introspect,” Trust Treasurer Swami Govind Dev Giri told reporters in Ayodhya on July 6, 2026.
After deferring the executive selection by a month in July, the Trust on September 2, 2026 appointed retired Indian Air Force Air Marshal Jeetendra Mishra as its first full-time CEO, elevated Swami Govind Dev Giri to General Secretary, and named Mahesh Bhagchandka as the new Treasurer.
Why Did the Supreme Court Keep the Forensic Auditor’s Ayodhya SIT Report Sealed?
The Supreme Court of India kept the forensic auditor’s Ayodhya SIT status reports in sealed cover and declined to widen the probe beyond the counting-room FIR because Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s bench ruled that disclosing evidence during an active criminal investigation would prejudice the prosecution.
The decision to keep the criminal prosecution confined to the eight counting-room staff returned to the national stage on October 25, 2026, when Indian National Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge told a rally in Patna that he prayed for Lord Ram to “open his eyes” and punish those who had looted wealth in his name. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) representatives countered that opposition parties were exploiting an internal theft case, where the Trust itself initiated the police complaint and all eight accused were arrested, to weaken the Ram Temple and spread confusion ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
Behind that political dispute sits a dual-track investigative structure that blocked outside petitioners from widening the financial inquiry. Between June and September 2026, two distinct SIT mandates operated in parallel.
The first was the three-member administrative SIT formed by the Uttar Pradesh government on June 13, 2026, comprising Lucknow Divisional Commissioner Vijay Vishwas Pant, Inspector General (IG) of Police, Lucknow Range Kiran S, and Special Secretary (Finance) Neel Ratan. That panel produced the June 23 preliminary report and the August 17 final report delivered to the Trust.
The second track emerged from a batch of Public Interest Litigations (PILs), court petitions filed by citizens seeking judicial intervention on matters of public concern, titled Ajay Kumar Rai v. Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust (W.P.(Crl.) No. 241/2026) and Narender Kumar Goswami v. Union of India (W.P.(C) No. 790/2026). In orders passed on July 20 and July 27, 2026, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, alongside Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana, ordered the state to reconstitute the criminal SIT under IG Kiran S by adding one Deputy Inspector General (DIG), one Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), one Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP), and an independent Chartered Accountant serving as a Supreme Court forensic auditor on the Ayodhya SIT.
“The entire record of the trust, we safely presume, must now be with the SIT. Let the SIT do its job. We are not closing the matter. All these remedial actions will have to be taken,” Chief Justice Surya Kant stated in the July 27, 2026 order.
When the petitioners asked for copies of the SIT status reports and sought a forensic audit of all cash, gold, silver, digital, and foreign donations received since February 2020, Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta objected that the criminal investigation was still underway. Chief Justice Surya Kant’s bench accepted the reports in sealed cover, a judicial procedure where sensitive investigative documents are examined solely by the judges and kept off the public record, and declined to share them with the petitioners:
“We will see later. It’s an ongoing investigation. You know the law. We have passed an order,” Chief Justice Surya Kant observed.
On September 21, 2026, the Supreme Court also dismissed a separate petition by the Nirmohi Akhara seeking a directive to the Central Government to reconstitute the Trust. Two SITs. One sealed record.
Critics and PIL petitioners who served legal notices on the Trust argue that low-level clerks, including Manish Kumar Yadav, hired on April 15, 2026, could not have disabled biometric scanners, mixed hundis, and walked past SIS security guards without supervisory knowledge, and that handing the August 17 administrative report back to the Trust creates a conflict of interest.
Officials from the Trust and the Uttar Pradesh government respond that physical cash offerings in the hundis represent a small share of total temple income compared to banking transfers, which undergo regular audits by chartered accountants. They point out that Champat Rai and Dr. Anil Mishra stepped down voluntarily despite the SIT finding zero financial trails linking their personal accounts to the stolen currency.
Why Can’t the CAG Audit the Ram Mandir Trust and Its ₹3,264 Crore Expenditure?
A CAG audit of the Ram Mandir Trust cannot be initiated by the Comptroller and Auditor General on its own because the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra is a public charitable trust funded by private devotee offerings rather than government appropriations, placing its ₹3,264 crore ledger outside mandatory audit jurisdiction unless the President or Governor invokes Section 20(1) of the CAG Act, 1971.
The Supreme Court’s decision to keep the forensic auditor focused on the counting-room FIR leaves a broader statutory question raised by petitioners: why the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, the constitutional authority established under Article 148 of the Constitution of India to audit government revenue and expenditure, has not audited the temple trust’s books.
On July 6, 2026, the Trust released a five-year financial statement in Ayodhya detailing the Ram Mandir’s ₹3,264 crore total donation receipts: according to Treasurer Swami Govind Dev Giri, the Trust spent ₹2,370 crore on temple construction and ₹391 crore (out of ₹582 crore in counter offerings received up to March 31, 2026) on operations. In the same July 6 financial disclosure, the Trust confirmed that silver ornaments and artifacts donated by devotees had been melted into standardized silver bars at the Government of India Mint, backed by photographs, weight records, and Mint purity certificates.
Opposition leaders and PIL petitioners demanded a public audit to cross-check both the ₹3,264 crore financial ledger and the melted silver inventory against Hundi No. 12 collection logs. Under Indian statute, the CAG has no automatic power to enter the Ayodhya Trust’s offices.
Although the Central Government set up the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra on February 5, 2020 pursuant to the Supreme Court’s November 2019 Ayodhya verdict, it constituted the entity as a public religious trust governed by the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 and financed by voluntary devotee donations rather than recurring grants from the Consolidated Fund of India.
According to the CAG’s statutory audit authority under the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971, autonomous bodies and trusts that are not substantially financed by government grants or loans fall outside mandatory CAG audit. The sole statutory entry point is Section 20(1) of the 1971 Act, which permits the CAG to audit a non-governmental body only if the President of India or a state Governor formally requests the audit in the “public interest”, and only after giving the concerned organization an administrative hearing to state its objections.
Because neither the Central Government nor the Uttar Pradesh Governor has invoked Section 20(1) of the CAG (DPC) Act, 1971, the CAG remains legally barred from examining the Trust’s ₹3,264 crore ledger or the Government Mint silver conversion logs. As newly appointed CEO Air Marshal Jeetendra Mishra enforces revised counting-room SOPs in Ayodhya, public disclosure of the temple’s finances rests on a single pending decision before Chief Justice Surya Kant’s bench: whether the Supreme Court will close the PIL proceedings now that the chargesheet against the eight counting clerks is filed, or unseal the forensic auditor’s report.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why were only eight employees arrested in the Ayodhya Ram Mandir donation theft case?
According to the Uttar Pradesh Special Investigation Team (SIT) preliminary report, the temple’s CCTV system retained only 39 days of counting-room footage (April 27 to June 5, 2026) instead of the recommended 180 days, preventing prosecutors from quantifying thefts prior to April 27. Within that 39-day window, a forensic audit identified 105 theft clips involving eight counting-room and support staff, who were arrested on June 26, 2026, with nearly ₹80 lakh recovered.
Why were Champat Rai and Anil Mishra not charged in the Ayodhya temple theft FIR?
Former Trust General Secretary Champat Rai and Trustee Dr. Anil Mishra resigned on June 26, 2026 on grounds of moral responsibility, but the SIT found no financial trails linking their personal accounts to the stolen currency. In its final administrative report handed to the Trust by the UP Home Department on August 17, 2026, the SIT classified the non-enforcement of Dr. Anil Mishra’s February 6, 2025 cash-handling guidelines as an administrative supervisory lapse rather than a criminal offense.
How much donation money has the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust received and spent?
According to a five-year financial statement released by Trust Treasurer Swami Govind Dev Giri on July 6, 2026, the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust received ₹3,264 crore in total donations, spending ₹2,370 crore on temple construction and ₹391 crore on operations up to March 31, 2026. The Trust also disclosed that donated silver ornaments were melted into standardized bars at the Government of India Mint with weight and purity certificates.
Why hasn’t the CAG audited the Ayodhya Ram Mandir Trust’s accounts?
Because the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra was formed under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882, and is funded by private devotee offerings rather than recurring grants from the Consolidated Fund of India, it is exempt from mandatory audits under the CAG (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971. Under Section 20(1) of the 1971 Act, the CAG can audit the Trust only if the President of India or the Uttar Pradesh Governor makes a formal request in the public interest after granting the Trust a hearing.