The Ayodhya Bar Association on Monday decided not to provide legal assistance to the eight persons arrested in connection with the Ram temple donation-embezzlement case.

“We’ll not contest the cases of the eight accused persons. We have decided to impose a penalty of ₹5 lakh on any lawyer who violates the decision. Their membership will also be cancelled forever,” Kalika Prasad Mishra, president of the association, told reporters after a meeting on the district court premises.

“We also demand that the government hand over the case to the CBI. We will file cases against members of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust who were supposed to prevent such a crime on the temple premises but allowed this to happen. We have formed a panel of 15 lawyers for this purpose,” he added.

The police arrested the eight accused on Thursday on a complaint filed by Krishna Mohan, a member of the trust. Mohan's complaint was based on an SIT report that named the accused, who were tasked with counting cash and other valuables daily and transporting them to the State Bank of India’s Naya Ghat branch in the town.

Sources said the police interrogated three employees of the SBI branch on Monday in connection with the theft. Two of these three employees were supposed to be present during the counting of cash on the temple premises and its transportation to the bank.

“Initially, the two cashiers used to be present, but of late they would directly reach the bank at the time of depositing the cash. We collected the bank details of the two cashiers and a third employee. We hope that a subsequent investigation of their financial transactions would reveal their involvement in the case,” said a senior police officer in Lucknow.

Statements of the trust’s general secretary, Champat Rai, and member Anil Mishra were recorded on Friday and that of the shrine’s acting administrator, Gopal Rao, on Saturday. Rai and Mishra had resigned on Saturday. Rai had vacated his office in Ayodhya on Sunday and left for New Delhi, but the other two members are still there in the temple town.

The local Bar association has warned all of them against leaving Ayodhya.

The situation has been further complicated by a rumour that the Centre has asked the remaining trust members to pass a resolution at its meeting on July 11 to appoint a CEO as its head.

“We have information that Nripendra Mishra, a retired bureaucrat associated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for many years and currently working as chairman of the construction committee of the trust, has proposed his name for the job,” said a man associated with the temple management.

Besides trust president Nritya Gopal Das, its current members are treasurer Govind Dev Giri, former attorney-general K. Parasaran, Swami Vasudevanand, Swami Vishwaprasanna Tirtha, Parmanand Giri and Dinendra Das (all four associated with the VHP), Prashant Lokhande and Sanjay Prasad (both IAS officers), Ayodhya district magistrate Shashank Tripathi, Mishra and RSS member Krishna Mohan.

Das and Rai were elected president and general secretary of the trust in its first meeting in 2020 while the Modi government nominated the remaining 12.

The Jyotirmath Shankaracharya, Swami Avimukeshwaranand Saraswati, said nobody was blaming the treasurer for the theft “because he is a stooge of the Prime Minister”.