Ram Temple Donation Case: Judicial Custody Of All Eight Accused Extended

An Ayodhya court has extended the judicial custody of all eight individuals accused in the high-profile Ram Temple donation embezzlement case.

The accused were produced before Additional District and Sessions Judge Pratibha Narayan via video conferencing, who ordered them to remain in jail for another 14 days, setting the next hearing for July 27. Meanwhile, the court is set to decide on a separate request from the prosecution seeking police remand for two of the primary accused to allow for deeper custodial interrogation.

Key Suspects and the Remand Request

The prosecution has explicitly requested police custody for Ramashankar Yadav (alias Tinnu Yadav) and Subhash Srivastava. Investigators argue that further questioning is critical to uncover how the funds were diverted and to recover missing evidence.

The two suspects held distinct, strategic roles within the temple's daily operations:

• The Key Custodian: Tinnu Yadav, who previously worked as a driver for the temple trust’s general secretary, Champat Rai, reportedly had direct access to and oversight of the keys to the temple's donation boxes.

• The Counting Supervisor: Subhash Srivastava, a former bank employee, was brought in specifically to oversee the team tasked with counting the massive daily cash offerings and valuables left by devotees.

Four other co-accused in the case have already undergone separate rounds of police interrogation, which investigators claim provided the foundational leads necessary to map out how the embezzlement ring operated.

Deeper Legal Complications

The case has also triggered an unusual legal gridlock within the local justice system. The Faizabad Bar Association took a fierce public stance against the alleged theft, passing a formal resolution to completely boycott the eight accused and strictly forbidding any local lawyers from representing them.

To ensure the legal proceedings could actually move forward under constitutional guidelines, the Uttar Pradesh government had to step in and appoint an outside state legal aid defence counsel, who is not a member of the local bar, to represent the defendants.

With the Special Investigation Team (SIT) aggressively expanding its probe—including recording statements from top administrative members of the temple trust—the upcoming court ruling on whether to hand Yadav and Srivastava back to police custody is seen as the next major tipping point in the investigation.