This is the second of a two-part series from Ayodhya examining the functioning of the Ram temple trust from the lens of local residents who interacted with the trustees and are familiar with its functioning and its former secretary, Champat Rai. Read the first part.Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh): It is during a recent interview with journalist Abhishek Upadhyay on June 9, 2026, for his YouTube channel, Top Secret, that a former accountant with the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, Mahipal Singh, laid bare the flawed accounting process – with no mechanism for daily audit or accountability – at Hindutva’s marquee temple in Ayodhya.Singh said during the course of this interview that the alleged theft of temple donations came to his attention in 2021. He also said that he had reached out to both Champat Rai and Gopal Rao – the secretary and invitee member of the trust, who have since resigned and been asked not to attend meetings, respectively – but his pleas led nowhere. Instead, he said, he was subtly asked to leave by another trustee, Anil Mishra, who had inducted a new person in Mahipal’s place.In Ayodhya, this reporter met a local resident, familiar with the trustees, who had been in touch with whistleblower Mahipal Singh in 2022, shortly before he left his job at the temple. Singh had shared his ordeal with this person, describing how he was witness to the corruption within the temple administration four years ago.Singh’s family was close to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Kota, Rajasthan and had even given a piece of land for the construction of a temple in his hometown. Champat Rai, who is also the international vice president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) frequented this temple, leading to familiarity between the two.Once the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya began, Mahipal Singh opted for voluntary retirement from his bank job. He was handed the role of an accountant at the temple, a task to which he now dedicated his time.Things, however, didn’t go as expected for Singh. According to the local resident, Singh had told him, “I was scared to see the kind of corruption [prevailing] there. It was a mistake to have come here… but then I thought that at least for eight months, I got an opportunity for darshan of the bhagwan.”This reporter also learnt that in 2022, Mahipal Singh had told the same local resident that he was looking for another job in Ayodhya. According to the local resident, Singh had said, “I’m the kind of person who has zero tolerance for corruption. And there [at the temple], full-fledged corruption had been going on, right in front of the CCTV cameras, where even I used to sit.”When The Wire contacted whistleblower Mahipal Singh, he confirmed to this reporter, “It was on behalf of the Sangh [RSS] that I had been deployed to give sewa (work), free of cost [at the temple] between April 2021 to July 2022.” Singh, however, declined comment on the alleged involvement of the temple’s top management, including Rai and Anil Mishra, another trustee, or Gopal Rao and Govind Giri, the treasurer, in the alleged corrupt practices.“Whatever I had to say is in the public domain,” said Singh, reiterating that he stood by the names of bank officials, Ratnesh Chaturvedi and Gagandeep, along with counting staff, who were allegedly involved in undervaluing voucher figures.From tulsi leaves to charnamrit: the temple’s new rulesA few steps away from the Mani Ram Das Chhavni in Ayodhya, the “nerve centre of all planning before the mosque was pulled down in 1992”, lies the Dant Dhavan Kund Achari temple which has a history related to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.On October 30, 1990 and November 2, 1990, Uttar Pradesh Police twice opened fire on kar sevaks, bands of worshippers who visited the disputed Babri masjid site since the late eighties, demanding the temple be constructed instead of the 16th-century Babri mosque.While some top leaders of the saffron brigade such as Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Rithambara took refuge inside the Mani Ram Das Chhavni, a significant Hindu spiritual site and centre in Ayodhya, the Dant Dhavan Kund Achari temple, too, emerged as a focal point for hundreds of kar sevaks to rush in search of a safe haven.Dant Dhavan Kund Achari temple, near the spot where kar sevaks were fired upon by the police in 1990. Photo: Akanksha KumarA road, barricaded on one end, goes past the Dhavan Kund Achari temple, ultimately leading to the Hanumangarhi temple, is still referred to by the bystanders as the place where police had targeted kar sevaks.The lane in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, where kar sevaks were fired upon by police in 1990. Inset: Mahant Vivek Achari photographed with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Photos: Akanksha KumarFrontline magazine had reported in March 2002 about the VHP deciding it would go ahead with its agenda of donating a stone for the construction of Ram temple at the still-disputed site, though some religious factions had chosen to stay away from the programme in the wake of February 27 Godhra incident, in which 59 kar sevaks returning to Gujarat had perished.Swami Narayanachari, the head priest of the Dant Dhavan Kund temple, is one of those who stayed away from that VHP event. Twenty-four years later, his son, Mahant Vivek Achari, who took over as the mahant or chief priest in December 2020, is a vocal critic of the functioning of the Ram temple trust.“Initially their [the trustees’] behaviour was fine; then they became rude towards us. The Peethadheshwars and mahants are usually ignored by the trust,” Achari told The Wire. Among the instances he cited were Ayodhya’s dharmacharyas (religious leaders) being allocated space to one side of the venue during the dhwajarohan (flag hoisting) ceremony held in November 2025 as well as during the consecration ceremony in January 2024.“The Ram temple, after all was meant for the preservation of Dharma (religious duty); even Lord Ram always followed a certain maryada (ethical conduct) and those who are the dhwajawahak (flag-bearers) of the lord himself were sidelined,” says the mahant.This is not his only grouse. Earlier, he told The Wire, he had called for an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the funds theft case. “The CBI should be roped in just so that the taint on an Ayodhyawasi can be removed,” he said, referring to the residents of the town, who have expressed anger and concern over the theft coming to light.Recalling certain diktats issued by the temple administrator, Gopal Rao, who has since been ‘asked not to attend meetings of the trust’, Achari told this reporter, “A certain business head from the Oberoi group who lives in the United States of America came to visit the temple. When requested if a tulsi (basil) leaf or a flower offered to the deity could be given to him as a nishani (souvenir) since he had come all the way from America, we were told to check with Gopal Rao on this. There are 18 pujaris (priests) inside and even a tulsi leaf requires Gopal Rao’s permission.”The Wire reached out to Gopal Rao for a response on the allegations, but he disconnected our call.Meanwhile, Karpatri Maharaj, too, has a bitter experience of abiding by one such diktat, reportedly issued by Gopal Rao.“Once I had gone to the temple and requested the pujari to give me some charnamrit (offering to the deity); I was told that Gopal Rao had instructed not to distribute charnamrit anymore. He has even issued instructions not to refer to a priest as ‘Pandey ji’ or ‘Chaubey ji’ and call them ‘pujari’,” said Karpatri Maharaj.“He [Gopal Rao] doesn’t even hold a position in the trust and is among the invitees, yet his writ ran large,” Karpatri said.Other trustees under the scannerOn July 1, 2026, Surya Kant Pandey, Communist Party of India’s (CPI) Ayodhya District Secretary, wrote to President Droupadi Murmu on the issue.“When those from the RSS who were members of the trust earlier could not save it from the loot, then I find the immediate re-induction of members from the Sangh objectionable. My request to you is that the inclusion of people belonging to a particular ideology in the trust would be fatal,” stated the letter, a copy of which has been seen by The Wire.“It would be better that those with neutral background; such saints should be included in the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust,” Pandey wrote.The Wire contacted Pandey, who said that among the trustees, it is Dr Anil Mishra’s rise that he finds particularly intriguing. “He [Mishra] began practicing as a homeopathic doctor at two places here; in Sahabganj and Rikabganj localities, around the 1990s. He used to undertake activities related to the Sangh. He came from an ordinary family,” he said.Anil Mishra’s father, Babban Mishra, had migrated to Ayodhya from Ambedkar Nagar and worked as a contractor on road and building projects.Mishra’s personal trajectory seemed to take a sudden upward turn after he joined the trust in 2020. At first, he owned one two-room home in an Ayodhya Municipal Corporation colony developed in the 1980s. After joining the trust, he purchased another flat in the same locality. Later, he bought another property in the Amaniganj locality.In its preliminary report, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the Uttar Pradesh government (which the Ram temple trust shared on July 6 as part of its press release) said, “Anil Mishra represented the trust as far as the SoP was concerned. His role was important since he knew very well about the SoP; and was even made aware through internal mechanisms about frisking not being done. Despite this, no written instructions were issued regarding frisking.”The SoP or Standard Operating Procedures were arranged between the trust and the employees of the bank responsible for managing the counting centre at the temple. Going by the report, the arrangement was disregarded by the temple administration even though it was put in place after several suspected cases of theft.In his 1997 book, The Idea of India (Penguin, 2004), social scientist Sunil Khilnani describes the Ram Janmbhoomi project in Ayodhya as setting up a “Hindu Vatican”. To Hindu nationalists, this meant “the rise of the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party, the political arm of the RSS] as the chosen party to right immemorial wrongs and put modern India in direct touch with its glorious past”.Similarly, in his 2024 book, Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Decline of India (Context, 2024), author Siddhartha Deb dwells on the significance of Ayodhya as a political project for the BJP. “The harsh truth about Ayodhya seemed to be that very little had changed there for the better even if the temple-building campaign had made its effect felt all over India by fuelling the rise of the Hindu right throughout the country. Modi, in particular, seized on it, taking its combination of violence and spectacle further by giving it the distinctive stamp of his paranoid personality.”Exactly a month after the Ram temple funds theft controversy broke out, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasn’t commented publicly on the issue. Not yet.