Ayodhya Mandir Theft: Why Are Our Temples Being Treated As Family Fiefdoms?

The footfall in Indian temples has skyrocketed astronomically in the last decade. All our major hubs have experienced an unprecedented surge of devotees and revenue. The construction of the Kashi Vishwanath corridor in Varanasi has seen an unprecedented surge in devotees, and from five million tourists who visited it in 2014, the numbers in 2026 are expected to cross 150 million. The four Dhams of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath saw over 52 lakh tourists visit these four shrines in 2025 between May and September, a far departure from five decades ago when a handful of pilgrims would often spend months negotiating the steep pathways that led up to these shrines.

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But few places have seen the transformation that has taken place in Ayodhya, where the construction of the grand temple has drawn millions ever since it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi in 2024.

To several journalists who had congregated at Ayodhya in December 1992, the city appeared to be little more than a dusty, quiet pilgrimage town with thousands of small temples, maths and akharas. The Saryu River flowed past this quaint town, its waters feeding the large tracts of agricultural land that surrounded Ayodhya. Little did my colleagues and I realise that we would witness the pulling down of the Babri Masjid, which would permanently alter the political landscape of the country. Four years later, the BJP had emerged as the single-largest party in Parliament, laying the groundwork for coalition governments and, eventually, for an absolute majority government.

Overnight, once the Babri Masjid had been pummelled to the ground, a makeshift ‘Ram Lalla’ temple comprising a statue of Ram had been placed on the site of the Babri Masjid, and local villagers were being told to go and worship there. The Ram temple standing at the same place today is built as a monument to this political victory and serves as the foundational stone for the BJP’s subsequent successes.

The town of Ayodhya has been well rewarded. Already, Ayodhya has received a $6 billion makeover and can now boast of modern amenities, which would have been unthinkable two decades ago. This temple alone is drawing over 100 million tourists a year. In comparison, the Vatican City attracts nine million people, and Mecca draws 20 million annually.

The government is spending another $15 billion on developing 45 other key temple sites. With the centre focusing so much on temple construction and development and with the spin-offs of this investment having already fetched a revenue in excess of $10.8 billion in 2024, set to double in the next five years, the question uppermost in the average Indian’s mind is, why have our key shrines been allowed to become hubs of corruption and theft?

There is not a single important shrine today which has not been rocked by one scandal or the other. Gold from the gold-plated sanctum sanctorum of Kedarnath, costing several hundred crores, was stolen overnight. The theft created a major outrage, but the culprits continue to abscond. Badrinath is currently in the throes of a financial scam, and accusations of large-scale corruption have been made for the Krishna Janambhoomi temple in Mathura. Unlike in Kedarnath, the thieves did not strip the temple walls of Sabarimala bare. Rather, they were clever enough to substitute several kilos of gold for cheap, gold-plated copper. In Tirupati, thieves chose a more ingenious method. Between 2021 and 2024, an Uttarakhand-based company, Bhole Baba Organic Diary, substituted pure cow ghee with 68 lakh kg of synthetic mixtures to defraud the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams of Rs 250 crore.

The pattern of temple frauds has been disturbingly consistent. Tamil Nadu has a long trail of missing idols and looted temple objects. Many rare statues are known to have been smuggled out of the country. Even smaller shrines have not been spared. In 2025, at the Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain, police cracked down on multiple fake websites that were duping devotees with fraudulent online accommodation bookings. Many such frauds across our temples are being perpetuated by priests or their family members.

In 2018, reports emerged that the keys to the ratna bhandar at Puri’s Jagannath Temple had gone missing. The gravity of the situation prompted the Odisha government to establish a judicial commission to investigate how such a breach could have occurred.

But few frauds can match the scale of embezzlement at the Ayodhya temple. Since the inauguration two and a half years ago, over 80,000 devotees have been visiting the temple daily, their offerings running into lakhs of rupees. The wealthier are offering silver and gold items. A few months ago, the supervisor of the temple trust accounts team went public when he raised concerns about the handling of cash offerings and precious metal items that were received as gifts.

UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who was at crosshairs with the trustee’s former general secretary, the powerful VHP former vice president Champat Rai, appointed a Special Investigation Team to look into the matter. On reviewing the CCTV footage, the SIT found that the counting staff had been hiding bundles of currency in their clothes and shoes. Eight people have been arrested, and around Rs 79.85 lakh has been recovered from them.

Another close associate of Champat Rai, Gopal Rao, and his son were allegedly transporting sacks filled with precious metals to Karnataka, reportedly to be handed over to RSS functionaries there. While the trust reported an annual income of Rs 3.27 billion for 2024–25, a former Ayodhya city legislator claims that more than Rs 70 million is missing and that the total theft could be close to Rs 2,000 crore. This “chanda chori” follows on the heels of allegations that land around the temple was acquired at low rates and then sold to the Ram Janmabhoomi trust at prices far above the prevailing circle rates.

Why are our temples being treated as family fiefdoms by politicians? Temples are public institutions that need to be run with much greater transparency. The average devotee, who aspires to visit these places, would have often spent several years saving to be able to make a visit. For him, these temples are the only cultural anchor he can hold on to. Faith needs to be supported by strong institutional systems, not vague sentiment that can be exploited by human greed.

Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.

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