Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and two other Opposition MPs have been booked in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi for allegedly insulting Sanatan Dharma during a protest outside Parliament, The Hindu reported.

Sanatana Dharma is a term some people use as a synonym for Hinduism.

On Friday, INDIA bloc MPs, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Gandhi, staged a protest over the alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

During the protest, the MPs enacted a skit. They dropped money into a donation box, while Independent MP Pappu Yadav, dressed in saffron robes, pretended to take the money out and put it into his pockets.

On Saturday, a first information report was registered at Kotwali police station against Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Yadav and Samajwadi Party MP Awadhesh Prasad.

They have been charged under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings and uttering words with the deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person, the newspaper reported.

The FIR was registered on a complaint by Jagadguru Balak Das, head of the Patalpuri Math, a Hindu religious institution.

Ram temple donation embezzlement case

A new special investigation team has begun probing the alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple

An earlier three-member SIT was formed on June 13 at the request of the temple trust after Opposition leaders and a whistleblower raised questions about how donations were being handled at the temple.

In its preliminary report, submitted to the Uttar Pradesh home department on June 23, the SIT found 70 instances of counting staff hiding bundles of notes and loose cash in their clothes, pockets and shoes. Scroll has seen a copy of the report.

The report alleged that offerings were stolen during the counting process with staff routinely hiding cash on their bodies and walking out with it, as systems meant to stop this were not enforced. It also flagged serious lapses by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust and the State Bank of India, the banker to the trust.

The report held trustee Anil Mishra, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader, responsible for the dilution of security protocols in the counting room but did not recommend any action against him.

While it did not name Champat Rai, the trust’s general secretary, one of his aides was among the eight staffers it recommended the police investigate. The eight persons were also named in a first information report registered on June 25.

Mishra and Rai have resigned from their positions in the trust.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

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