The Probe Reaches Ayodhya’s Inner Circle Things are moving fast in Ayodhya right now. On June 13, 2026, the Uttar Pradesh government dispatched a three-member Special Investigation Team to look into the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. The brief was clear.
They needed to figure out what exactly happened to the millions of rupees in public donations pouring into the Ram Temple.
This isn’t a routine audit. The allegations are heavy. Whistleblowers and former insiders are pointing at missing cash, deleted CCTV footage, and an utterly compromised donation counting process. Some estimates claim 7.5 crore simply vanished.
Other voices from the political opposition are throwing around numbers as high as 200 crore, factoring in missing diamonds and gold ornaments.
Right now, the SIT-led by Lucknow Divisional Commissioner Vijay Vishwas Pant, alongside IGP Kiran S and Special Secretary Neel Ratan-is digging through the ledgers. They have explicitly told trust members and temple functionaries not to leave the city. The noose is tightening around the administrative apparatus, and it raises a critical question.
If investigators prove that public donations were intentionally siphoned off, what legal hammers will fall on the officials running the Trust? Tracing the Cash and the Camera Blind Spots Before dissecting the legal penalties, you have to look at the mechanics of the alleged theft. The Trust had outsourced the banking operations to the State Bank of India.
SBI then brought in a Varanasi-based private security agency to handle the physical sorting and counting of cash.
That is where the firewall apparently broke. Instead of using vetted professionals, the agency allegedly started hiring local Ayodhya residents based on direct recommendations from individuals tied to the Trust itself. Nepotism crept into the counting room. We know from preliminary reports that a trust employee named Anukul Mishra allegedly got his brother-in-law hired for cash-counting duties.
The standard operating procedures were ignored.
Workers showed up to handle massive piles of uncounted currency in their regular clothes, bypassing the mandatory uniform policy. When you put people in regular clothing with deep pockets into a room full of uncounted cash, the risks are obvious. Investigators also noted that employees figured out the blind spots in the CCTV network.
They could stand directly in front of the cameras, obscuring the view, before reportedly pocketing the donations. The physical security of the offerings was compromised from the ground floor up. The probe has also zoomed in on the Maha Kumbh period from January to February 2025.
The temple saw a massive surge in footfall back then.
Reports suggest nearly a million devotees visited every single day during peak weeks. More people means more donations. Investigators are specifically eyeing the ledgers from this window, knowing that a chaotic, crowded environment is the perfect cover for skimming cash. The Legal Crosshairs: Criminal Breach of Trust Trust officials who facilitated or ignored these lapses are looking at severe statutory penalties.
Because the incident spans into 2026, any formal charges will be framed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the new legal code that replaced the Indian Penal Code.
The primary legal threat is criminal breach of trust. When a religious trust collects money from the public, the individuals running it are legally bound custodians. They do not own the money.
They hold it in a fiduciary capacity for a specific purpose. If an official converts that money for personal use, or willfully allows someone else to steal it, they trigger Section 316 of the BNS. Because we are dealing with a registered public trust, the penalties are amplified.
Under the law, a breach of trust by a clerk, servant, or public agent carries a heavy custodial sentence.
If investigators can prove that specific officials directed the siphoning of temple funds, they could face imprisonment extending up to ten years, alongside hefty financial fines. The courts do not take the misappropriation of charitable or religious funds lightly. The breach of fiduciary duty elevates the crime from simple theft to a severe violation of public faith. Fraud, Conspiracy, and Forgery But the statutory penalties go beyond breach of trust.
The SIT is also pulling files on the Trust’s land purchases and construction material procurement.
There are long-standing accusations that the Trust bought surrounding parcels of land at wildly inflated prices, essentially creating a backdoor mechanism to drain the donation coffers. If the land deals were rigged, officials face charges of cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property under Section 318 of the BNS. Cheating carries a baseline penalty of up to three years.
But if it involves property delivery or is committed by someone bound to protect the interests of the person wronged-like a trustee-the sentence can jump to seven years. There is also the issue of the ledgers. Devotees have donated massive amounts of physical gold and silver.
Temple sources claim investigators found glaring discrepancies in the documentation and inventory of these precious metals.
If trust officials doctored the accounting books to hide missing gold, they will be hit with falsification of accounts and forgery under the BNS. Forging documents to mask financial crimes adds another distinct layer of imprisonment, often running concurrently but severely damaging any chances of early bail. These actions rarely happen in a vacuum. A scam involving compromised security agencies, manipulated hiring, and deleted CCTV footage requires coordination.
This brings criminal conspiracy into the picture.
Under Section 61 of the BNS, anyone who agrees to commit an illegal act is liable for the same punishment as the primary offender. Even if a top trust official never touched a single stolen rupee, if they conspired to let the theft happen, the law treats them as if they robbed the donation box themselves. The Shadow of Money Laundering Laws We also have to look at federal statutes.
The sheer volume of the alleged missing funds-ranging from crores of rupees to unregistered precious stones-could easily attract the Directorate of Enforcement. If the stolen donations were funneled into private bank accounts, converted into benami real estate, or washed through shell companies, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) gets triggered. The PMLA is notoriously brutal.
It places the burden of proof heavily on the accused.
If trust officials are charged under the PMLA, they face rigorous imprisonment ranging from three to seven years. More importantly, the Enforcement Directorate has the statutory power to attach and confiscate their personal properties. An official caught washing temple money could lose their own homes, vehicles, and private bank balances long before a trial even concludes. An Unfolding Legal Reality The SIT is currently sending daily digital reports directly to the Chief Minister’s Office in Lucknow.
Public interest litigations have already landed in the Supreme Court, with petitioners demanding a full CBI probe and an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
The Uttar Pradesh government has set tight deadlines for the preliminary and final reports. The coming weeks will reveal exactly how much of the temple’s wealth went missing, and who will be standing in the dock to answer for it. — You can watch this Business Today report for more context on how the SIT investigation into the temple donations is currently unfolding.
