Varanasi security agency denies role in Ayodhya Ram Temple donation scandal
A private security agency from Varanasi says it had no part in the alleged embezzlement of donations at Ayodhya’s Ram Temple, explaining that it only provided staff to the State Bank of India (SBI) when asked. However, six of the eight people arrested by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) were hired by Sainik Security Services (SSS), putting the agency at the centre of the controversy.
The agency director, Gaurav Singh, said the company hired 19 to 22 people and sent them to SBI’s Naya Ghat branch in Ayodhya for housekeeping work.
He explained, “Temple is not our client. The SBI is. We are the second vendor.” He also said, “What work the bank assigned to them thereafter is not known to us.” According to Singh, the local SBI branch chose 19 people for the cash-counting team. The agency maintains it only supplied workers and did not decide their duties or supervise them at the temple.
The arrested recruits, Anukalp Mishra, Lavkush Mishra, Manish Kumar Yadav, Ramashankar Mishra (also known as Tinnu Yadav), Avinash Shukla, and Karunesh Shukla or Pandey, worked in the cash-handling unit for donations. They earned about Rs 20,000 per month and were responsible for sorting, counting, and securing offerings from hundi boxes.
The other two people arrested are Subhash Srivastava and Tinnu Yadav (a different person from the alias). The SIT is looking into how this team was put together and whether proper background checks were done.
SBI outsourced the demanding cash-counting work to SSS but kept overall responsibility for the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. This meant that low-paid contract workers handled cash as it moved from devotees to official records.
The agency says it only supplied staff and that the bank decided their roles, but this raises questions about who is responsible when sensitive tasks are outsourced. Standard operating procedures were agreed upon by the trust in 2025, and SBI required counters to wear pocketless clothing, undergo regular frisking, be subject to random checks, retain CCTV footage for 180 days, and have a security guard from SIS present during counting.
However, none of these rules was followed. CCTV footage was kept for only 45 days, no guard was present, and basic safety steps were ignored.
SBI officials reportedly noticed problems and suggested changing the counting staff three months earlier, but trust officials are said to have resisted. Two SBI employees who supervised the process are also being investigated. Police have recovered about Rs 79.85 lakh in cash from the accused, and some reports say the trust recovered around Rs 58 lakh internally before the formal FIR was filed.
SSS presents itself as just a vendor with a limited contract. But by providing the staff who ran the cash-counting unit without strong vetting or supervision, the agency became a key contributor to the failures. The SIT is now looking at how staff were recruited, the local branch’s role, and the ignored procedures to see if workforce suppliers are responsible when their employees are entrusted with sacred donations.
As the investigation looks into financial records and possible large-scale theft, Sainik Security Services’ claim of a limited role will be closely examined, since most of those arrested at the counting table were its employees.
