New team for counting Ram temple donation in two shifts under SBI supervision
Bank sources said that the exercise started on Sunday after completion of a week-long trial, following which the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Foundation officially handed over the counting process to SBI.
According to temple sources, a team of 10 to 12 people is assigned to each shift. The first shift works from 08.00 to 14.00 in the morning, and the second shift works from 14.00 to 20.00.
Sources said the trust appointed Shobhnath Mishra as the new in-charge of cash counting after the previous official Subhash Shrivastava was sent to jail in the donation theft case.
To strengthen the audit, the foundation appointed four auditors, including a former soldier, as the enumerator.
Trust Security Officer and former Army officer Captain KK Tiwari has been appointed as the senior in-charge of daily reporting of the counting process.
Sources added that former defense personnel SP Dubey and Sheshmani Tiwari have also been appointed as trust representatives to oversee the cash counting exercise. The misappropriation of Ram temple donations came to light in the first week of June, following which the Uttar Pradesh government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) on June 13 to investigate the allegations.
After the preliminary SIT report was submitted on June 23, an FIR was registered on June 25 and eight accused (Avinash Shukla, Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Manish Kumar Yadav, Karunesh Pandey, Ramashankar Mishra, Subhash Srivastava and Ramashankar Yadav alias Tinnu Yadav) were arrested.
During investigation, police seized cash from multiple accused along with Rs 20.39 lakh from Avinash Shukla along with gold, silver, foreign currency and a donation box labeled “Ramrajya Kosh”.
