Eight employees and cash-handling staff at India's Ram Mandir temple have been arrested on charges of theft, criminal conspiracy, fraud and criminal breach of trust, following allegations that tens of millions of rupees in devotees' donations were systematically misappropriated. Police registered a formal case on 25 June after a Special Investigation Team (SIT) submitted a preliminary report to the state government of Uttar Pradesh, and officers subsequently recovered approximately 8 million rupees in cash from the suspects' homes. All eight individuals — named in the First Information Report as Avinash Shukla, Anukalp Mishra, Luvkush Mishra, Manish Kumar Yadav, Karunesh Pandey, Rama Shankar Mishra, Subhash Srivastava, and Rama Shankar Yadav — were remanded to judicial custody. Investigators found that the accused had intentionally blocked security camera views while processing offerings from around 35 donation boxes across the site.
The Ram Mandir, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2024, stands in Ayodhya, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh considered by devout Hindus to be the birthplace of the deity Ram. The temple was built on land where the 16th-century Babri mosque stood before it was demolished by Hindu activists in 1992, an event that triggered riots killing nearly 2,000 people. After decades of legal dispute, India's Supreme Court in 2019 awarded the site for temple construction. The shrine now draws an estimated 50 million visitors annually, recording an income of 3.27 billion rupees (around $35 million) in the 2024–25 financial year alone. A former city legislator has alleged that more than 70 million rupees went missing, while some opposition figures place the total much higher.
The controversy erupted publicly on 7 June 2026, when Akhilesh Yadav, president of the opposition Samajwadi Party, raised questions about missing donations and called for an inquiry. The original whistleblower, Mahipal Singh, a former supervisor of the trust's accounts team, claimed he was removed after raising internal concerns about cash and precious metal handling; he has since cited death threats and declined further comment. The trust managing the temple — the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust — denied any wrongdoing, with its general secretary Champat Rai stating that counting procedures are routinely audited by trustees and bank officials. However, one of the arrested individuals is reported to be a close aide of Rai, and opposition parties, including the Congress party's Uttar Pradesh unit, have demanded that investigators look beyond the eight arrested and examine senior trust figures.
The case has significant political and religious dimensions. The temple's construction was a central electoral promise of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and its opening is widely credited with boosting the party's support ahead of a general election held shortly afterward. Opposition parties are now demanding accountability from Modi and the BJP, which also governs Uttar Pradesh. Several petitions have been filed in the state high court and the Supreme Court seeking a court-supervised investigation by federal police. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has vowed that "no guilty person will be spared" and urged anyone with evidence to come forward, while asking devotees to await the SIT's conclusions.
Beyond the immediate arrests, the scandal has prompted calls for structural reform of temple management. The chairman of the temple's construction committee, a former senior civil servant, has publicly proposed appointing a full-time professional chief executive to handle day-to-day operations. The SIT has also recommended practical safeguards, including pocketless uniforms for cash-counting staff and the replacement of the current volunteer-driven accounting system with rigorous professional auditing. For many ordinary devotees, the allegations carry a weight beyond financial loss. "The faith of countless Hindu believers is shaken," one donor told reporters — a sentiment that underscores why a dispute over temple finances has become one of India's most politically charged stories of the moment.