One man who has held the fort at the Ramjanmabhoomi site since the Supreme Court paved the way for the construction of Ram temple is bespectacled Champat Rai. From the ‘bhoomi pujan’ of the grand temple on August 5, 2020 till date, Rai has been meticulously involved with brick-by-brick construction of the temple in his capacity as the general secretary of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

But his association with the Ram temple movement goes back to the 1980s. Given his deep knowledge about the alleys and history of the temple town, Rai is called the “encyclopaedia of Ayodhya”. When the Ramjanmabhoomi case was being intensely fought in the courts, Rai often helped the counsels from the Hindu side with the documentary evidence about the Ram Lalla’s abode.

This ‘record keeper of Ram Lalla’ actively participated in the karseva of December 6, 1992 — the day Babri masjid was brought down.

Born as Champat Rai Bansal in UP’s Bijnor district in 1946, he was drawn to the RSS ideology from his childhood. He was a chemistry lecturer at RSM Degree College in Bijnor before he joined the temple movement.

Some close associates of Rai recall that he was arrested during the Emergency in 1975 for having links with the RSS. “He was giving a chemistry lecture in the college when a police team arrived to arrest him. Rai told them to wait until he finished the lecture. Such was his stature that cops agreed and took him away only after the class,” recalled an associate of Rai.

He remained behind bars for 18 months and was shifted from one jail to another during this period. After his release, Rai quit the job as a lecturer and joined the Vishwa Hindu Parishad which was steering the temple movement. He worked in the Awadh region mobilising youth for the temple movement. Rai also holds the post of the international vice-president of VHP.