The Names Missing From the Ram Temple Donation Case Final Report

A separate SIT probe, under Supreme Court supervision, remains open even as this one concludes.

By Mahima Katal

New Delhi, Aug 18: The Special Investigation Team probing the alleged donation theft at the Ayodhya Ram Temple has reportedly cleared former Trust general secretary Champat Rai and former Trust member Dr Anil Mishra, with the panel's final report, submitted to the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust on Monday by the Uttar Pradesh Home Department, said to contain neither name among the accused, according to people familiar with the matter. Both men had resigned their positions on June 27, at the height of the controversy, and were subsequently questioned by the SIT on how donations were managed and counted at the temple.

What emerges from that questioning, according to people familiar with the investigation, is a defence Rai has maintained consistently since the allegations first surfaced: that he had no role in the theft, that the complaint which led to the arrests of eight temple staff was filed on his own initiative, and that donation-collection oversight was among his responsibilities, one he says he acted on the moment irregularities came to his notice.

If the reported findings hold, the final report's silence on his name would suggest the SIT found nothing to contradict that account. Mishra's reported clearance follows the same pattern, though an earlier finding in July had flagged administrative lapses attributable to him even as it found no documentary evidence linking Rai directly to the missing funds, a distinction that appears, per available reporting, to have persisted into the final report.

The three-member SIT, led by Lucknow Divisional Commissioner Vijay Vishwas Pant, with Range Inspector General Kiran S and Special Secretary (Finance) Neel Ratan Kumar as members, was constituted on June 13 at the Trust's own request, before the Supreme Court's intervention brought a second, parallel probe under judicial supervision. Its preliminary report, submitted on June 23, was stringent enough to prompt Trust member Krishnamohan to file a police complaint days later.

The FIR that followed on June 25 named eight individuals, Avinash Shukla, Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Manish Kumar Yadav, Karunesh Pandey, Ramashankar Mishra, Subhash Srivastava, and Ram Shankar Yadav alias Tinnu, all since arrested and booked under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Section 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The gap between the preliminary and final reports is where the real story sits. The former set off criminal proceedings against eight people within days. The latter, months later, is reported to close the file on the two men whose resignations had done more than anything else to signal that the Trust itself considered the allegations serious. If accurate, their absence from the final report would answer the question of individual culpability.

It would not close the case: a second SIT, working under direct Supreme Court supervision rather than at the Trust's request, continues its own inquiry, leaving open the structural question of how donations running into lakhs of rupees went missing under a system Rai himself has said he was responsible for securing.