Ayodhya, June 26 (IANS) All eight individuals arrested in connection with alleged misappropriation of donations and offerings at the Ram Mandir were remanded to three-day judicial custody on Friday. They will stay in jail till June 29 and will be produced before the city court again on Monday.

The police are now preparing to seek police remand to interrogate the accused and ascertain how they hatched and executed a plan to embezzle the devotees’ donations, running into crores.

According to the police, all the accused were produced before the Magistrate’s Court, due to the public holiday on account of Muharram, which ordered them to be sent to judicial custody.

A total of eight accused have been booked for alleged theft at the temple, and all were subsequently arrested. The FIR was registered at Ayodhya Kotwali police station on Thursday, based on a complaint filed by Krishna Mohan, a member of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

Those named in the case include Ramshankar Yadav (alias Tinnu), who is associated with temple management; Trust employees Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Manish Yadav, Karunesh Pandey, Ramashankar Mishra, and Avinash Shukla; and retired bank employee Subhash Srivastava.

The filing of the case came soon after a three-member SIT flagged several irregularities at multiple levels in its preliminary report.

The police state that the entire episode of alleged theft will be uncovered based on interrogation of the accused and CCTV-based evidence. If more names are revealed in the investigation, action will be taken against them as well.

The preliminary probe has highlighted key roles played by each accused at various levels. The role of Ramshankar Yadav alias Tinnu Yadav is particularly under increased scrutiny.

The police are likely to investigate the dubious appointment process of cash counting staff, find out the key recruiter and also how the ex-banking staff played a role in siphoning off the offerings via banking channels.

Police officials said that during the remand period, they will seek to piece together the chain of events and links regarding the alleged irregularities through detailed interrogation of the accused.

–IANS

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