After opening an investigation in June, Indian police arrested 8 people responsible for managing offerings at the Hindu temple in Ayodhya city, northern India, AFP reported.
Indian officials did not disclose the amount of money embezzled, but local media said that this figure is up to 30 million rupees (about 311,500 USD).
This is the latest scandal in a series of cases related to donations at major pilgrimage sites in India, including Badrinath Temple and the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams fund - one of the richest temple management organizations in the world with estimated assets of about 31 billion USD.
In the context of many religious organizations operating with huge scale and cash flow like large corporations, ensuring transparency is becoming a major challenge.
Hindu activist Rahul Easwar - grandson of the former chief priest of Sabarimala temple, Kerala state - said that the core loophole is the lack of transparency and lack of accountability.
Sharing with AFP, Mr. Easwar also said that large religious establishments need to tighten their finances through invoices, electronic accounting, surveillance cameras and independent audits.
At the Ram temple, the group of suspects easily profited from the loose counting process and the negligence of the security system.
Ram Temple, which just experienced this shocking scandal, was inaugurated in 2024, currently welcoming an average of 90,000 visitors per day with extremely stable cash and gold offerings.
However, the financial scandal here is particularly sensitive because the temple is located right at the heart of a centuries-long religious dispute. After the riots in 1992 that killed more than 2,000 people, the Indian Supreme Court handed over this land to Hinduism in 2019, paving the way for a fundraising campaign to build the temple worth 341 million USD.
According to consulting firm IMARC, the Indian spiritual market reached 70.14 billion USD in 2025 and is expected to reach 135.41 billion USD in 2034. Despite its huge scale, management is currently very fragmented.
Lawyer Sonam Chandwani of KS Legal & Associates Law Firm said that India is lacking a unified national legal framework on religious financial transparency. He pointed out the challenges from major festivals gathering millions of people such as Kumbh Mela - the world's largest pilgrimage and religious festival of Hindus - with huge offerings.
Political analyst Anurag Naidu shared with AFP: "Religious organizations have now developed far beyond the scale of traditional worship. They are required to have financial control systems and independent monitoring mechanisms.
