Eight individuals were booked into a local court on Wednesday by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigating on behalf of the CBI alleged irregularities in the donations made at the Ram temple in Ayodhya. It goes into a charge sheet, which is in excess of 60,000 pages and mentions the investigation of alleged unauthorised withdrawals, dealing with donations and financial transactions in the case of the accused people.
Examining footage from the camera and interviews with witnesses and donor records, investigators identified 105 cases of cash being transported and hidden by anyone other than the leaders within the premises, after which the Supreme Court had ordered such a probe. No evidence was found of any valuables being stolen during transportation to the banks from the temple in the investigation.
The eight accused arrested on June 26 include Avinash Shukla, Karunesh Pandey, Ram Shankar Yadav/alias Tinnu, Subhash Srivastava, Anukalp Mishra, Manish Yadav, Rama Shankar Mishra and Lavkush Mishra. The police recovered Rs 79,85,493 from the accused earlier with cash reportedly being recovered in bathrooms and haystack, cow dung cakes.
The investigation further explored three main thematic areas. The first concentrated on cash handling, ranging from counting to segregating and preparing cash for bank deposit. The second looked at flights of counted cash to banks, and investigators reported no evidence of pilferage taking place at banks. This last showed valuable donations, philatechnology and art work.
The SIT physically verified 803 valuable articles, and there were no differences when it is matched against the receipts, which were pre-generated through the temple’s software. They also looked at 86 articles that they didn’t have a receipt for. The probe also included donated silver, which consisted of 200 kg of silver bricks and another consignment of silver weighing 38.288 kg.
The stolen bank accounts and banking records, property records, vehicle ownership, jewellery and construction costs, and other financial transactions of the accused were all examined by the investigators. In addition, 173 witnesses like officials at the temple, counting staff, bank officials, security guards, operators of CCTV cameras, chartered accountants and vendors were examined by the SIT.