The chargesheet filed in the Ram Mandir donation theft case has revealed that the theft syndicate was uncovered by the counting staff, and they had sent the first video to Champat Rai, the then general secretary of the temple Trust.
He was also informed that a total of 67 people were involved in the offering theft. Initially, Rai was informed about the theft by Anand Kumar Chaudhary, while two other messages and videos were sent to him on June 4 from two different mobile numbers.
The video showed bundles of currency notes inside a bathroom. The currency amounted to Rs 2.75 lakhs and was recovered later.
What did witness Anand say?
Anand Chaudhary informed the police that on June 4, he was stopped by the employees present in the counting room on behalf of the bank and the trust while he was leaving for home after the end of duty.
These employees included Satya Prakash from SBI, Vinay Srivastava from the Trust, counting employee Madan Gopal Nigam, Akash Gaur, Hrithik Singh and one more employee.
One of them told the police that during his duty hours, a day earlier, Karunesh Pandey, Lavkush Mishra, Avinash Shukla, and Anukalp Mishra were working with him. He alleged that they had stolen money and kept it in their waist pockets from under the table.
The next day, Sant Prasad Verma saw Avinash stealing the donation money. When checkpoints in the counting room were set up, the accused hid the stolen money in the bathroom.
ALSO READ: Ram Mandir Donation Theft Case: 105 Instances Caught On CCTV; Chargesheet To Be Filed In 2 Days
SBI employee who leaked theft information to Akhilesh Yadav turns witness
Meanwhile, the cops have named as a witness the person who leaked the information about the theft to Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
He is a State Bank of India employee and is among the 133 witnesses in the case. He is accused of passing details of the theft to the Samajwadi Party chief and making them public through his Facebook account.
The Trust not only discovered this during an internal investigation, but the police also recovered the deleted post and collected evidence during the investigation.
The accused will now appear in court on behalf of the police to testify about the incident. Notably, the information about the theft came to light on June 4 but became public on June 7 when Akhilesh Yadav tweeted about irregularities worth crores on his X account.
At that time, Champat Rai had issued a clarification denying the theft, but an internal investigation, which interrogated the suspected employees and the recovery of the cash, was already underway.
(With inputs from Praveen Tiwari and Lavlesh Kumar Mishra)