Starred Question ★ 5

F. No. SI/Q5/DONATION-BOXTo: The Temple Trust, the UP Government & the Party That Campaigns in His Name

They Won Votes in Lord Ram's Name, Not Answers for His Donation Box

Cash went missing from Lord Ram's donation box. Eight bank staff arrested, two trustees resigned, and two courts declined to hand the case to the CBI. Estimates of the missing sum are sixty-six-fold apart.

The question, for the Government of India

A generation of elections was fought in this temple's name, and no party gathered more from it than the one now in power. Then the money devotees left in its donation box went missing. An opposition leader's land file brings the ED without anybody having to ask; this took a whistleblower's video, cash found in an employee's pocket, a public row, an FIR the trust filed against the bank's counting staff, and two courts, to produce a reconstituted SIT. Kindly explain the difference in urgency. One sentence will do. We will laminate it and hang it beside the donation box.

Sub Judice (SC) · SIT Reconstituted · Live

The record, by exhibit

It began on 5 and 6 June 2026 with cash turning up in employees' pockets during frisking and a former temple employee posting a video alleging the donation box had been leaking for a while. Former SP MLA Pawan Pandey put the missing sum at ₹7 to 7.5 crore. Arvind Kejriwal later put it at ₹200 crore, plus 200 kilograms of silver. The trust's own treasurer puts it at roughly ₹3 crore. Three estimates of the same donation box, sixty-six-fold apart, and the only quantity nobody disputes is the faith that filled it.
The state constituted a three-member SIT on 13 June. Preliminary report on 23 June, FIR on 25 June, eight arrests, ₹79.85 lakh in cash recovered. All eight arrested are reported to be State Bank of India staff, deployed by the bank to count the collections. The men counting the money are in custody. Everyone who designed the arrangement in which the money was counted is giving interviews.
Investigators are reportedly examining whether donated gold ornaments were melted into biscuits to erase the hallmarks. Devotees offered their jewellery to Lord Ram. Somebody allegedly preferred it in a shape with no distinguishing features.
This is not opposition mud. The BJP's own Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh told reporters: “If I speak the truth, I will get into trouble because they are very powerful people,” then declined to say who they were. Party veteran Vinay Katiyar was less delicate about the trust: “sab ke sab chor hain.” When the family says it out loud on camera and then refuses to finish the sentence, it has stopped being a smear.
General secretary Champat Rai and trustee Anil Mishra resigned on 26 June, the day after the FIR. The treasurer, Swami Govind Dev Giri, is staying: “I never said I would resign. I am not one of those who run away.” He has also explained that the arrested men were SBI's employees and not the trust's, which is true, and which would be a better defence if the donation box had also belonged to SBI.
The CBI was asked for, repeatedly, by private citizens, an RJD MP and the Hindu Dharma Parishad, though notably not by the SP or the AAP, who limited themselves to asking loudly why nobody else had. The Allahabad High Court dismissed that plea on 6 July. On 21 July the Supreme Court declined to hand the case to the CBI as well, ordered the SIT reconstituted under a senior IPS officer, told the trust to preserve every receipt, and instructed all sides to stop playing politics with it. Next hearing: 27 July 2026.

The citations, in full

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