Swami Nityananda arrested in Solan

Apr 22, 2010, 01.08am IST

SHIMLA/BANGALORE: Controversial self-claimed godman Swami Nityananda, on the run since his sex romps were caught on tape and aired by TV channels, was finally arrested from a house in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday afternoon. Police recovered $7,000, Rs 3 lakh, three laptops, eight mobile phones, three video cameras from the house where Nityananda was staying since March 27.

The house belonged to Satinder Singh from Delhi, who, the police said, would be questioned soon. Nityananda was later driven down to Shimla and questioned there. Dressed in flowing robe but sans his trademark tilak, he looked calm. He would be produced in a Himachal court for transit remand and then taken to Bangalore on Thursday afternoon.

A joint team of Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh police tracked his cellphone calls for two days and surrounded the house in the isolated Shivshankargarh area in Solan. The police team from Bangalore, headed by two DSPs, had reached Solan on April 19. Cops took the help of a CID team from Shimla, before swooping down on

the house.

Assistant superintendent of police, Solan, Ramesh Pathania, said the swami was wanted by Kanataka police in two cases under Sections 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), 376 (punishment for rape), 377 (unnatural sex), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC.

After the tapes of Nityananda with a Tamil actress were aired on TV on March 3, the godman's former driver Kuruppan Lenin filed a complaint with the Chennai police commissioner, while another case was registered at Coimbatore by Vishwanath for hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus. Bidadi police registered the cases based on the two complaints. The cases were handed to the CID, after which the CID sleuths started getting complaints from overseas through e-mail.

A court in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu had issued a non-bailable warrant against him on Monday with the direction to produce him before the court on May 20, police said. His four aides have been identified by cops as Gopal Salem Reddy, Mithya Bhakta Nanda, Arun Raj and Arpil Sangil. The swami would be interrogated before a transit custody is obtained in order to hand him over to Karnataka police for investigation, said Himachal DGP Daljit Manhas. In Bangalore, CID DG Dr D V Guruprasad said a CID team conducted a search on the ashram on Tuesday and seized important documents, including hard disks.

Nityananda's lawyers said they were ready for a legal battle. A legal team is will move court in Bangalore on Thursday. Nityananda has rejected sex scandal allegations against him.

He resigned in March as the head of 'Dhyanapeetham', which he had founded near Bidadi on the outskirts of Bangalore.

 http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-04-22/india/28133316_1_swami-nityananda-bidadi-police-cid-sleuths