New Delhi: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s international vice-president Champat Rai, in the eye of a storm related to the revelation of donation theft at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya has announced he is going “maun” or completely silent.“Since June 6, 2026, I have been the target of many personalised, baseless allegations related to the theft of donations at the Ram temple; I have adopted silence in the matter,” he writes in a handwritten note released from his official X handle.He addresses the note to “Ram bhakts”, devotees of Lord Rama and he assured them that he would speak up after the final report is released.Rai’s name was repeatedly brought up by individuals close to him, some since many years, including his colleagues involved in the management of the Ram temple. They blamed him (and some other people) for the scandal and said the investigation should include them as accused.While the Faizabad Bar Association wants an FIR against him, a former associate, BJP parliamentarian Vinay Katiyar, “predicted” he would be jailed. All such remarks were made in public, before television cameras and to reporters, which promoted his resignation from the trust under a cloud last week.To be sure, the Ram temple trust’s treasurer Govind Dev Giri backed Champat Rai and said he “trusted the wrong people”, and the deputy chief minister of Uttar Pradesh backed him too. Even his outfit, the VHP, tried shifting the finger of blame away from the temple towards Opposition leaders.But Rai was questioned at length by the Uttar Pradesh Police as well as the SIT, and reportedly said in at least one of those sessions that he knew of the theft at the temple before it came to light.The trustees of the temple accepted his resignation during their Monday (July 6) meeting, effectively ending Rai’s stint as general secretary of the trust. Rai appears to have written the following hand-written note on the same day as the meeting, which he released on Tuesday:Champat Rai’s note, released on his X account on July 6, 2026.In it, Rai said he will speak about the allegations being levelled against him “point by point”, once the SIT’s final report is released. The report is expected on July 22.Rai’s associate ‘Tinnu’ Yadav is one of the accused in the case and the SIT names him as well as Anil Mishra and the eight people already arrested in the case. Mishra stepped down from the trust the same day as him. The SIT’s preliminary report does not mention Rai.It now also appears that the SIT’s focus has moved or expanded – away from just the donation fraud towards how funds were (mis)used during the consecration ceremony. The temple was inaugurated with a grand ceremony involving 8,000 guests that had Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the centre of attention.As for the donations theft itself, going by reports, the SIT has captured 70 instances of theft by counting staff (a department supervised by Anil Mishra), such as people stuffing cash into their socks and walking away. These incidents were reportedly captured between April 27 and June 5 this year, while the consecration (the most expensive single event so far at the temple) was in January 2024, before the last Lok Sabha election.Earlier, Rs 78.8 lakh was recovered by the SIT from the trust’s workers. The SIT report, surprisingly, reached the Sri Ramjanmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. Equally surprising was the trust’s press release issued on July 6 that claimed it had ordered the SIT investigation.