Skeletons tumble out of Akshaya Patra’s kitchen cabinet

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Editor's note: A lot has happened at The Akshaya Patra Foundation (TAPF) over the last few months, culminating in the resignation of independent trustees from its board, a hurried reconstitution of the board itself and a lot of dirty laundry being aired in public. And, all of this has come out in a week when the NGO should have been celebrating its 20th anniversary. A barrage of reports followed, detailing parts of this still-developing story. Here’s what we know so far.  Over the last couple of years, the trust running the NGO received many whistleblower complaints, which led to investigations that revealed questionable practices in various activities of the foundation. These resulted in an internal audit.  According to people with direct knowledge of developments, a lot of back and forth happened over the findings of the audit in the last few months. Abhay Jain, an adviser to the Manipal Education and Medical Group who helped form the trust and was on its board since inception, resigned in February, citing governance issues. But instead of acknowledging the problems highlighted in the audit report, …