Lucknow: The eight arrested in the Ayodhya Ram temple donation-theft case had founded an organisation called “Ram Rajya Prashasan” and installed steel boxes across several places in the temple town with “Ram Rajya Kosh” stickers affixed to them, sources said.

These cash-collection boxes also featured a QR code that guided users to an online payment interface, the sources added.

Though most of these boxes were removed by unidentified people after the arrests on June 25, one remained at the Shyam Sadhnalaya Yoga Kendra, where Avinash Shukla, one of the accused, used to live.

“Initially, Avinash had rented a room here. Later, his elder brother Abhishek, a schoolteacher, joined him. Avinash brought this box in early June and kept it in the hall. He also put a lock on it. We don’t have to do anything with him or the box. We had asked him to vacate the premises on June 6 when we came to know about his involvement in stealing money from the Ram temple,” an employee of the yoga centre, which also doubles as an NGO, in Kaushalpuri told reporters on Wednesday.

Seema Tiwari, a yoga instructor, said the police had arrived at the centre with Avinash for the first time on June 5 and recovered some cash.

“When we asked Abhishek about the raid, he said Avinash was a drug addict, and the narcotics department officers had come here to interrogate his brother,” Tiwari said.

A register at the yoga centre lists Avinash as one of its management committee members.

A senior police officer in Lucknow said: “We didn’t know about the Ram Rajya Kosh, but the police had recovered over ₹25 lakh from Avinash’s room at the yoga centre. The police raided his paternal house in Pratapgarh on Tuesday evening and found that he was building a new house adjacent to a mud house in which his parents live.”

Ayodhya circle officer Ashutosh Tripathi, who has been made an inquiry officer in the case, said an investigation was underway and he would not be able to divulge much.

Knives out

Dinendra Das, a member of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra, has blamed temple administrator Gopal Rao for the theft of donations and offerings. “Gopal Rao, who was made administrator of the temple without any such qualification, is a bad person. He is behind the theft of donations from the temple,” he said.

“Anil Mishra (a trust member) and Gopal Rao had appointed all those who have been arrested,” a former employee of the temple said.

Rao and Mishra have denied the allegations and claimed that the inquiry was started following their complaint.

SIT extension

The Uttar Pradesh government has given a 15-day extension to the SIT probing the case, officials said on Wednesday.

“The SIT had sought additional time from chief minister Yogi Adityanath to conduct a comprehensive examination of the various aspects of the case. Accepting the request, he directed the SIT to submit its report by July 15,” an official statement said.

Additional reporting by PTI