New Delhi: The Supreme Court will on Monday (July 13) hear petitions seeking independent investigation into the misappropriation and theft of donation funds at the Ayodhya Ram temple, LiveLaw reported.A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana will hear the batch of pleas.One of the petitions, filed by Narendra Kumar Goswami, seeks an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), along with an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of the finances of the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Theerth Kshetra Trust, which managed the Ayodhya Ram temple.The second petition, filed by Ajay Kumar Rai and Dinesh Kumar Yadav, also seeks a similar direction for CBI probe. Meanwhile, the third petition, filed by RJD MP Sudhakar Singh, has called for a forensic audit of the entire finances of the temple trust in the light of the scam, in addition to a CBI probe under the monitoring of the Supreme Court. Singh’s PIL further seeks the top court’s directions to preserve financial records, including physical documents, digital ledgers, UPI transaction logs and bank statements, to prevent any tampering with evidence.Two parallel investigation are being conducted into the alleged temple funds scam – one by the Uttar Pradesh government-appointed three-member Special Investigating Team (SIT) and another by the Uttar Pradesh police. So far, eight people have been arrested in the case. On June 29, a local court had sent all the eight accused to 14-day judicial custody.The SIT has identified Avinash Shukla as the prime accused in the case. The top court had previously refused to urgently hear a petition seeking registration of an FIR and a court-monitored investigation into the case. Petitions are also pending in the Allahabad high court seeking similar reliefs.