The Ayodhya police arrested four persons for fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 6 lakh from the bank account of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust in September.

The kingpin, however,  managed to evade the police net.

Confirming the arrest, DIG, Ayodhya, Deepak Kumar said on Wednesday that efforts were being made to trap the prime accused after extracting inputs from the arrested cohorts.

As per the police, Rs 6 lakh was transferred to Punjab National Bank in Maharashtra from Ayodhya’s State Bank of India using two cloned cheques of Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 3.5 lakh bearing forged signatures of the trustees.

The scam was detected after a third cloned cheque was intercepted at a SBI clearing house in Lucknow.

The withdrawal was made on September 1 but Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust was in the dark about the fraudulent withdrawals till the third cloned cheque of Rs 9.86 lakh was presented at a Bank of Baroda’s branch and sent to SBI for clearance after a week.

After this, a senior bank official contacted temple trust secretary Champat Rai to verify whether he had signed on the high-value cheque. The transaction was stopped after Rai confirmed that he did not approve of any withdrawal and the account was seized. An FIR was lodged at Ayodhya police station on September 10.

The arrested persons were identified as Prashant Mahaval Shetty (40) of Mumbai, Vimal Lalla (40), Shankar Sitaram Gopale (54) and Sanjay Tejraj (35), all of Thane (Maharashtra).

The mastermind hails from Varanasi and is on the lam.

The DIG of Ayodhya said that the involvement of bank employees in the fraud was also being investigated.

The accused would now be taken in police custodial remand and grilled to extract details of others involved in the scam.