An old CCTV clip from Gujarat’s Ambaji Temple has suddenly gone viral — and it couldn’t have picked a more sensitive moment. The footage, which shows a temple employee allegedly hiding a bundle of cash while donations were being counted, is not new. But it’s back in circulation right when two of India’s biggest pilgrimage sites, the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and Badrinath Dham, are already under fire over their own donation-handling scandals.
What the video shows
The clip is from inside Gujarat’s Ambaji Temple’s strongroom, where an outsourced employee is seen tucking away a bundle of currency notes during the weekly donation count. According to temple officials, the man’s name is Chirag Thakor, and the incident goes back to May 5, not something that just happened.
What gave him away was almost farcical. He reportedly asked for a bathroom break to slip out of the counting room, but a bundle worth ₹1.04 lakh fell out of his pocket in front of the other staff. Officials later noted the cash had been tied with a rubber band, which, to them, suggested this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment theft but something planned.
What the Collector said
Banaskantha Collector Mihir Pravinkumar Patel, who is also the temple’s managing trustee, addressed the controversy directly. He explained that the Ambaji Temple Trust counts its donations every Tuesday, and it was during one such count around two months ago that the theft was spotted.
“The Ambaji Temple Trust conducts the counting of temple donations every Tuesday. Around two months ago, during one such donation-counting process, it was discovered that a temple employee had allegedly stolen a bundle of cash while the counting was in progress,” Patel told reporters.
He said the Trust moved fast: an FIR was filed immediately, the police investigated and arrested three temple employees, and all three were dismissed from service right away.
The temple’s new security overhaul
Patel said this incident pushed the Trust to completely rework how it handles donation counting. The new Standard Operating Procedure includes:
Over 20 high-resolution CCTV cameras now watching the counting room at all times, with footage kept for six months
The counting process broadcast live on a large LED screen at Chachar Chowk, so devotees can watch it happen in real time
Staff frisked with metal detectors, in the presence of police, both before entering and after leaving the counting room
A ban on clothes with large pockets for anyone involved in counting
Class IV and outsourced employees taken off counting duty entirely
Ambaji isn’t alone in tightening things up. The Baba Balak Nath Temple in Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur has brought in a similar pocketless-clothing rule, and the Karnataka government has issued its own SOP for state-run temples covering security, transparency and accountability.
Why this is suddenly a big deal: Ayodhya
The reason this old video is trending now is the storm around the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. A Special Investigation Team set up by the Uttar Pradesh government reviewed CCTV footage from between April 27 and June 5 and found around 70 instances of counting staff allegedly hiding cash bundles in their clothes, shoes or pockets. The probe also flagged that staff weren’t being frisked on the way in or out of the counting hall, and checks on personal belongings were weak.
Eight people have been arrested so far in connection with the case: Avinash Shukla, Anukalp Mishra, Lav Kush Mishra, Manish Kumar Yadav, Karunesh Pandey, Ram Shankar Mishra, Subhash Srivastava, and Ramashankar Yadav alias Tinnu Yadav.
Investigators say around ₹77 lakh has been recovered from the accused. An Ayodhya court was recently expected to rule on a police remand plea for Tinnu Yadav and Srivastava, while a special anti-corruption court in Faizabad has extended judicial custody for the other eight accused by 14 days, till July 27.
The matter has now reached the Supreme Court. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant issued notice to the Centre, the Uttar Pradesh government, and the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust on petitions demanding an independent, court-monitored investigation.
One petition wants a CBI probe and a CAG audit of the Trust’s finances; another, filed by RJD MP Sudhakar Singh, is asking for a court-monitored CBI investigation along with a forensic audit and preservation of all financial records. The Court has also asked the SIT to share details of who’s on the team.
Separately, the Ram temple trust has opened applications for its first-ever Chief Executive Officer post, open till July 18, with a preference for practising Hindus and ideally devotees of Lord Ram from the Vaishnava tradition.
And then there’s Badrinath
Around the same time, a similar scandal broke at Badrinath Dham in Uttarakhand. Routine counting on July 2 turned up irregularities, and CCTV footage allegedly showed Pramod Nautiyal – a long-serving BKTC employee and former personal assistant to the committee chairman – making repeated trips between the counting area and his office, allegedly hiding bundles of ₹500 and ₹100 notes, gold and silver coins, shaligram stones, and offering envelopes worth an estimated ₹10,000–12,000 each trip. Investigators are also going back through footage from June 25 and 29 to check for a pattern.
Nautiyal was suspended on July 7, arrested by the SIT, and has denied all the allegations. He’s since moved the Uttarakhand High Court against his suspension and the FIR; the next hearing is on July 16. A four-member departmental inquiry team has since submitted an 18-page report to the BKTC CEO, and its preliminary findings suggest the theft wasn’t a one-off — it happened on multiple occasions. The SIT also questioned the temple’s CEO, Sohan Singh Rangad, and his personal assistant, Atul Dimri, over gaps in oversight, and investigators have been going through the temple’s CCTV control room logs to see how daily donations were actually handled.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has promised strict action, while the Congress opposition, led by state president Ganesh Godiyal, has been holding protests accusing the state government of failing to protect the sanctity of the pilgrimage site.
The bigger picture
None of this means the Ambaji video is proof of some new theft — it’s genuinely old footage, and the case against the accused there is already in the courts. But it’s landed at a moment when donation counting at major Hindu temples across India is under real scrutiny, from Uttar Pradesh to Uttarakhand to Gujarat. The common thread in all three cases is the same: cash-heavy, manual counting processes with weak physical checks on staff, and temples now scrambling to shut that gap with cameras, frisking, and dress codes.
Whether these SOP overhauls actually restore public trust, or whether devotees stay uneasy about where their offerings are going, is something that will likely play out over the coming months as the SIT probes and court cases in Ayodhya and Badrinath continue.
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