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Informist, Monday, Jul. 20, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court Monday suggested the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government set up a special investigation team to probe the alleged financial irregularities in handling of donations and offerings at the Ram temple in Ayodhya by officials of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said the SIT could be headed by a senior officer who was also part of the previous probe team that had found a cognisable offence in the case.

 

Chief Justice Kant also warned the litigants not to politicise the issue of financial irregularities at the trust. "Courts are not a place for politics. It's a simple case of commission of crime," he said. The apex court is here only to ensure there is proper and fair investigation that is is taken to its logical conclusion, he said.

 

Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said he has submitted a status report on the probe in the case. Investigation is going on and eight persons have been arrested, he said, adding that other details cannot be divulged at this stage. Chief Justice Kant said he will take up the case after three or four days and go through the status report.

 

The court was hearing petitions filed by Narendra Kumar Goswami and others. The petitioners sought a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the allegations of large-scale misappropriation of donations received by the trust. They aso sought a forensic audit of donations and offerings received by the trust.

 

In June, reports emerged of irregularities, misappropriation, disappearance, and mishandling of donations and offerings at the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Mandir in Ayodhya. Thereafter, the Uttar Pradesh government set up a special investigation team to examine the matter. The SIT was formed only to find the truth in the allegations. Various high-ranking leaders within the temple administration have resigned and eight people have been arrested. 

 

The petitioners argued that the disappearance or mishandling of offerings made to a deity is an injury to faith, to public trust, to constitutional morality, to the devotees' right to worship, and to the integrity of public religious endowments. Where devotees place money, gold, silver, jewellery, precious articles, or digital donations before the deity, such offerings become impressed with a fiduciary character, they claimed. The absence of uniform safeguards for temple donations creates arbitrary and unreasonable risk of breach of faith, misappropriation, and violation of devotees' constitutional rights, they said.

 

The petitioners sought a declaration that offerings made by devotees to the temple's trust, including cash, gold, silver, jewellery, valuable articles, and digital donations, are sacred trust property requiring transparent, accountable, and fiduciary handling. They have sought directions to the authorities to immediately preserve all footage, hard disks, payment gateway records, hundi opening registers, donation counting sheets, bank deposit slips, and documents relating to donations and offerings from the inception of the trust till date. 

 

The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi temple is among the more popular temples in India and has received unprecedented public attention and offerings from devotees. The trust administering the temple was created pursuant to the final judgment of the apex court in the Ayodhya dispute on Aug. 5, 2019. The court had held that while the demolition of the over 450-year-old Babri Masjid was a criminal act, the land should be handed over to the Hindu side to build a temple.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

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