The Supreme Court on Monday refused to urgently hear a petition seeking a “sealed cover report” on the status of the SIT probe into the Ram temple funds misappropriation case and preservation of all evidence related to donations at the Ayodhya shrine.
Observing that the matter did not require any urgent intervention, a partial working day bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Sheel Nagu said it would be listed immediately when the top court reopened on July 13 after the summer vacation.
On being asked the reason for the urgency, petitioner and advocate Narendra Kumar Goswami said he apprehended the destruction of evidence by vested interests and was forced to move the top court after failing to obtain a proper response from the authorities to his representations.
The petition has sought the immediate preservation of all evidence, records, CCTV footage and digital logs relating to donations and offerings at the temple and a sealed status report on the SIT investigation.
It has demanded an independent forensic audit of all donations, offerings and valuable items received by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust since its inception. The petitioner also sought the formulation of minimum constitutional safeguards for the transparent handling of public donations at temples of national importance.
According to Goswami, the temple trust was created pursuant to the top court’s November 2019 judgment in the Ayodhya title dispute and, therefore, “bears enhanced public-law obligations in preserving public donations received by it”.
The plea cited the Supreme Court judgment in the “State of Kerala vs Guruvayur Devaswom Managing Committee & Ors. (2025)” that temple offerings were the “absolute and inalienable property of the deity as a juristic person” and that “when a devotee drops a coin into the hundiyal with faith, that money instantly ceases to be secular currency and becomes the personal property of the deity”.
It was further held that neither the state governments nor the Devaswom boards had proprietary rights on the offerings, only managerial/trustee duties.