New Delhi: Two people linked with the Ayodhya Ram Mandir trust have made statements appearing to contradict what the administrative body officially said after its meeting Monday, its first since the donation embezzlement allegations now embroiling the temple surfaced last month.Though the trust had said in a press release that former general secretary Champat Rai’s resignation letter was presented for consideration at the meeting and accepted, trustee Dinendra Das has reportedly claimed this was not so.Rai’s resignation letter was not placed before the trustees during the meeting and a majority of members were opposed to the idea of removing him because his “role could not be established in the investigation”, the Times of India quoted Das, who is chief of the Nirmohi Akhara that was one of the original litigants in the Babri Masjid case, as saying on Wednesday.Instead, trust treasurer Govind Dev Giri informed members that Rai and trustee Anil Mishra had sought to step down and that their resignations had been accepted, the newspaper cited Das as saying.A stalwart of the Vishva Hindu Parishad that was a key player in the movement that razed the Babri Masjid and constructed the Ram Mandir at the same spot following the Supreme Court’s 2019 verdict, Rai stepped down as general secretary of the trust on ‘moral grounds’ as the embezzlement scandal picked up steam.When the allegations became public early last month Rai had said that “so far nothing noteworthy has come to anyone’s attention”, but he has since been reported as telling investigators he was aware of the alleged theft before it hit the headlines. Later, he said ‘many baseless allegations’ are being levelled against him and that he never signed off on a change in the temple’s donations counting procedure that has come under official scrutiny.Meanwhile Gopal Rao aka Gopal Nagarkatte, a special invitee to the trust, suggested that he was simply asked not to attend the body’s meetings for some time.Although the trust said on Monday it had decided to remove Rao’s name from its list of special invitees, he told reporters the following on Wednesday: “Everyone collectively felt I should not come to the trust’s proceedings for a few days, which I accepted, that’s all.He added: “A new arrangement will take its place at the temple, I have to help, I will go to the temple till at least the 15th. I will assist till the need exists. When the new team arrives, I will step back.”During his press conference after the trust’s meeting Monday, treasurer Giri said: “We used to call Gopal Rao ji as an invited [member]. Now he will not come [to the trust] in the form of an invited [member]. A stop has been put on that.”Allegations that donations were stolen from the Ram Mandir surfaced early last month, about a week after which the Uttar Pradesh government constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the matter. Roughly two weeks after that, on June 26, the police arrested eight persons in its FIR lodged only the previous day.In its interim report presented to the state government the SIT has pointed to a number of procedural lapses in the counting of donations at the temple; read Ankit Raj and Akanksha Kumar’s detailed coverage on the interim report for The Wire here.