A land of 890 sq meters, where the grand Ram temple complex will come up, belonged to a mahant, Devendra Prasadacharya, until February this year. On February 20, Deep Narayan bought the land from the mahant for Rs 20 lakh, gata number 135, Newlaundry reports.
Deep Narayan is the nephew of the Bharatiya Janata Party leader Rishikesh Upadhyaya, the Mayor of Ayodhya. The land records accessed by Newslaundry reveal that three months later, Narayan sold the property to the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust on May 11, set up by the Modi government to administer the temple’s construction for Rs 2.5 crore.
The records detect the property at Kot Ramchandra, Haveli Awadh, under Sadar tehsil in Ayodhya. The property map in the documents that Newslaundry checked on the ground shows it’s adjacent to the Ram Janmabhoomi.
Newslaundry reports that they confirmed the details of these transactions from the official website of the Integrated Grievance Redressal System, Uttar Pradesh (IGRS UP). While the transaction certificate reveals that Narayan bought the land from Prasadacharya on February 20, 2021, the transaction’s digital summary falsely puts it on February 22, 2021.
Narayan purchased the property at Rs 2,247 per sq metre from Prasadacharya and then sold it to the temple trust at Rs 28,090 per sq metre. The circle rate in Kot Ramchandra is Rs 4,000 per sq metre, the report added.
While Anil Mishra, a trust member, was registered as a legal witness for the transaction on May 11, the trust documents show that they paid Narayan Rs 2.5 crore through RTGS. Whereas Narayan’s February 20 purchase shows names of Ved Narayan Pandey and Pawan Tiwari as witnesses.
According to the reports by Newslaundry, the day Narayan purchased the 890 sq metre land from Prasadacharya, he also sold another property, gata number 36M, in Kot Ramchandra to the temple trust for Rs 1 crore. This property of 676.86 sq metres, was sold for Rs 14,774 per sq metre. At a circle rate of Rs 4,000 per sq metre, this land of 500 metres from the temple complex is valued at Rs 27.08 lakh. Therefore Mishra was once again a legal witness to this deal.
The temple trust in Ayodhya is almost partly funded by crores of Indians who donated money to construct the temple during a “collection drive” by the Sangh Parivar in early 2020.
This information surfaces at a time when the temple trust faces allegations of fraud and corruption by the Samajwadi Party and the Aam Aadmi Party on the purchase of 1.2 hectares of property in Bagbijaisi village for Rs 18.5 crore from Sultan Ansari and Ravi Mohan Tiwari, who had purchased it for Rs 2 crore from Harish and Kusum Pathak minutes before on March 18, 2021. The circle rate valued this land at Rs 5.8 crore.
Earlier this week, Newslaundry reported that Harish Pathak was an absconding fraudster facing multiple cases of cheating, forgery and impersonation across Uttar Pradesh.
The sellers Harish Pathak and Prasadacharya sold the property to a nephew of Mayor Upadhyaya, Ravi Mohan Tiwari and Deep Narayan, respectively, to a price under the circle rate. The relatives, in return, sold it at an increased rate to the temple trust, the report added.
The temple trust claimed Tiwari and his associate Sultan Ansari had bought the property for Rs 2 crore only because of an earlier agreement between Tiwari, Ansari and Harish Pathak.
When Newslaundry spoke to Mayor Upadhyaya, he neither denied nor confirmed his familial relation to Narayan. And when questioned about Narayan’s sale and purchase of land, the Mayor replied that only Narayan and the Ram Janmabhoomi trust would be able to comment on the deals.
