Fame for Sai - or notoriety?

Sathya Sai Baba has claimed that the murders in his bedroom would only increase his fame! However, since then he and his (claimed up to 100 million) followers have – with a couple of exceptions – have remained totally silent about this! Isn't that remarkable! The murders are a strictly taboo subject in the ashrams and it is forbidden to mention it in public by members of the Sathya Sai Organization! At the same time, others have not been silent. The Home Minister of Andhra Pradesh and in charge of the State police at the time, Mr. V.P. Nair, as he makes very clear as follows:-

Tanya Datta: So are you suggesting that the police executed the boys that night?
VPB Nair: In absolute... this is absolute cold-blooded murder.
Tanya Datta: Some police officers were arrested but never charged. The case was eventually dropped. Sai Baba has always had a close relationship with the police. Even today, senior officers are special guests at the Ashram. With friends in such high places Sai Baba seems to be untouchable. Any attempt to investigate the goings-on at his Ashram even, murder, appear doomed to failure. Critics say police connections ensured that Sai Baba wasn't even interviewed, despite being one of the witnesses to the events of that night.

The above is part of the transcript of the BBC documentary ‘The Secret Swami' sent worldwide by BBC World. see the relevant Secret Swami video clip here ) Increased fame has not resulted, but increased ‘notoriety' certainly has! So much for yet another of Sathya Sai's so-called “infallible Divine Predictions”!


How Sathya Sai deceived his followers as to the murders

Any independent (i.e. non-devoted) reader of Sathya Sai's Guru Poornima discourse ( July 3 1993 see on p.6) in which he tried to calm devotees. The horrendous affair with armed police executing intruders took place right under his nose and within his legal jurisdiction as the all-powerful leader of Prashanthi Nilayam independent township (self-proclaimed Almighty God, guru avatar, Creator etc.). Yet his account of events - the only one he has given - was as vague as can be and most fishy in that he tried to clothe events in a mystique, strongly insinuating that it was preordained and making clear that what happened was known to him in advance!

One interesting point concerns what Sai Baba said about his valet, Radhakrishna Menon. In reaction to Sai Baba's rebuke for wanting to remain downstairs when it was only 7 p.m., Radhakrishna said (Sathya Sai's own words - see here) "Swami has perhaps some doubts that I may go out somewhere and talk to others". Baba said that he replied, "If I have such doubts, will I keep you with me? Not at all. There are no doubts. I am saying this for your good".

The question arises as to what exactly it might have been that Radhakrishna Menon could have talked about that could cause Baba not to keep him. It must have been something serious that others should not know. What had they to hide? That there was something is obvious, and all the more so in the light of what actually occurred as a result of Radhakrishna going out (which he did, according to Baba's own account). Radhakrishna's remark could well have had to do with money, with clandestine Central Trust operations and possible kickbacks from construction companies vying for contracts.

Who was the intruders target?

A report in the Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad . 26-6-1993, stated:-

"Further investigations by Chronicle revealed that it was not Satya Sai Baba who was the target for the attack. In fact, it was Radhakrishna Menon, the Godman's personal assistant… Though Radhakrishna succeeded E.K. Suresh a year back, he was a close confidant of the Baba for 15 years. He had his finger in every pie of whatever Baba did. He soon became so powerful that he once reportedly threatened one of the trust members 'to expose the misdeeds of the trust. This, it is understood, had antagonised many important trustees." These trustees included Head of the Ashram, Mr. Narayanan, who was removed from the Central Trust for embezzlement [having built himself a luxury villa with unaccounted funds] and the former very closest servitor through decades, engineer Colonel Joga Rao, who was finally also kicked off the Central Trust by Sai Baba himself for his repeated involvement in taking kickbacks for construction deals from Larsson and Tubro.

Other high Sai officials were removed for financial irregularities within the year by Sathya Sai, and all this despite Sai having angrily denounced in the Guru Poornima discourse all suggestions that misuse of funds or any fractions ever arose in the Trust.

However his own younger brother, Janakiramaiah (also sometimes referred to as Janakiramiah, Janaki Ram, Janakiram and Janaki), repeatedly claimed that misuse of funds were taking place! This information came to me personally from friends who are VIPs in the Organization and all was confirmed independently and explained in details to me on several occasions during conversations with the prominent former journalist and very close servitor of Sai Baba for two decades, V.K.Narasimhan.

After the murders and cold-blooded executions which Janakiramaiah was involved in forcing the police to carry out, he is on record for having constantly insisted was genuinely an assassination attempt against Sai, he was at last made a trustee by his elder brother, which post he held until he died in about 2004. As is known to many ashramites and most Puttaparthi residents, Janakiramiah had become a multi-millionaire in dollars from property speculation and owning corrupt businesses in Puttaparthi. V.K. Narasimhan, who knew him very well, told me in 1996 that Janaki Ram had become rich “beyond his wife's wildest dreams”.

What became of Non-violence and Compassion?

In the same 1993 Gurupurnima discourse quoted from above, Sai Baba continued his outright megalomaniacal boasting, saying, "My purity is the root cause of the glory of my name. (Applause). It is not due to any publicity or propaganda. My all-pervading selfless love is the cause. No one can affect this pure love. I have no ill-will towards anybody. Swami has done no harm to anyone."

But most people with their hearts still in the right place would consider that – if one really knew the future – Sai's not telling his close devotees of such an awful fate he knew to be awaiting them runs counter to any reasonable kind of love and compassion (which he has promised his devotees, as well as protection). Instead, this self-claimed “all-powerful Lord” actually ran away while the knifings were going on and locked the escape door after him from the outside, trapping four assailants in his bedroom apartment. Nor did Sai Baba lift a finger to avert it as it all took place under 'His Divine Nose', nor saying a single word to stop the shooting of the four who had long been, and still were, his devoted followers. He is known to have been consulted where he hid in his garage building attached to the temple well before the police shot down at close range in a hail of dozens of bullets the four young men who were armed only with knives! This completely exposes the hypocrisy in Sai Baba with his oft-quoted aphorisms like 'Help ever, hurt never.' Sai Baba is always preaching about how thoughts, words and actions must be in accord. But his verbal support of non-violence as a human values should surely also include active help and not being an accomplice - whether passive or active - to cold-blooded murder? Nor was he willing to appear before authorities for questioning and he helped engineer the effective cover-up through his discourse and many private meetings with the Home Minister, his devotee S.B. Chavan.

No wonder residents and especially the foreign visitors at Prashanti Nilayam were seen to wander about with tired, worried faces, or sitting at darshan in perplexed absence of mind (if not exactly the ‘mindlessness' so strongly encouraged by Sathya Sai!). How could the question that must have crossed their minds as to why Sai Baba did not intervene personally disappear from the thoughts of the great majority of them so soon and effectively? The intruders had all been his own students, the product of his own teachings!' No such 'demonic' doubts can be entertained by those who are – according to the flattery of their Divine Manipulator - the very grain, the fruit of humanity, the good devotees whose service has already saved the planet from catastrophe? Those who remained were hard core blind-faith believers who will not think, see, or hear any unpalatable truth (at least, about Sathya Sai Baba!).

Governmental connivance in the cover-up and quashing of the case

During the aftermath, when Indian Government authorities were trying to defuse the issue and cover it all up, V.K. Narasimhan was present to a conversation between the brother Mr. Janaki Ramiah and the Home Minister S.B. Chavan where they congratulated one another on having got the four alleged assailants murdered by the police and laughed saying 'Dead men tell no tales'. This shocked Narasimhan deeply, who apparently never recovered his previous somewhat troubled faith fully after that. He told me, referring to those who negotiated with the police on behalf of Sai Baba (including his brother Janakiramiah and Colonel Joga Rao) that “they did a terrible thing”. By using a hold that ashram authorities had gained over them when they allowed two murderers of a German lady to 'escape' in return for the money she was killed for in her new room in Prashanthi (about Rs. 80,000.-), the convinced the police to shoot down the four intruders, who were barricaded inside Sai Baba's bedroom apartment!

Some questionable events surrounding the murders issue

1) The refusal of the ashram and trust authorities to lodge any complaint on the six murders in Baba's quarters.

2) Suppression of the news of the murders by the police for 12 hours, of the post mortem reports until after burial/cremation and of trying to refuse access to the press to the First Incident Report (FIR), which later proved to be wholly uncorroborated and obviously false on the basis of many specific counts.

3) The secrecy of the Sathya Sai Central Trust in keeping photographers and journalists out of the ashram after the murders and in refusing to answer any questions of import concerning them either to the press or the various investigating authorities.

4) The mandatory magisterial probe and the CBI (Criminal Bureau of Investigation) reports were not completed and nothing of substance was made public, while the entire murder investigation was closed down by a confidential Government order, the remaining evidence of which is that no charges have been registered and no official report has ever appeared.

5) Many illegal irregularities during the investigation occurred, very inadequate search of the scene of the crime; failure to question many eye-witnesses of events (hundreds of local inhabitants, ashram residents and visitors, many MBA students who entered Baba's quarters while the 4 alleged assailants were still alive, whoever it was who took the injured attendants to the hospital, and others, including Sai Baba); the Central Bureau CID (Criminal Investigation Department) permitting the Puttaparthi police to search the ashram after expiry of their authority to do so; totally conflicting reports of where poison was found.

6) Refusal by Prashanthi Nilayama ashram authorities to allow the two injured attendants (A. Patley and V. Bhatt) kept by them under heavy security to give evidence (except in secret to the CID) and attempt - by removing him to a secret location - to cover up inexplicable and unexplained existence of the boy student in his early teens (Subbappaypa) in Baba's room who opened the door and gave Baba the alarm. The CID interrogated Subbappayya on two occasions, despite the ashram authorities demanding they present a valid authority to do so. Was this because sexual abuse was involved?

7) Failure to secure material evidence such as large sums of money in notes, bullets fired by the police, and to conceal material evidence like photos of actual and alleged injuries, the bedding of the four assailants who were to sleep on guard at the mandir that night.

8) No explanation as to why the bodies of the guards killed were found on the ground floor, when the assailants had reportedly crept up to the 1st floor and knocked at Baba's door to deliver a supposed telegram. Nor would the investigators explain how the alleged assailants entered Baba's quarters when the door had already been bolted from inside (by either Subbappayya or by Baba?).

9) Why were the video film and colour photos' negatives and positives of the bodies and crimes scene asked for by the Puttaparthi police later impounded by them? (However, despite this, colour prints have survived and have been published). The photos show a blood-stained lathi (police baton), pieces of rope in blood pools around two of the bodies, while the other two bodies have no blood around them, gloves lying neatly beside bodies of two who would have had no time to take them off having been shot through the head and heart at close range.

Sathya Sai Baba's self-declared knowledge and complicity

After the murders and executions in Sathya Sai's apartments on June 6, 1993 , he gave a waffling, incomplete and most unsatisfactory account of events in his discourse on Guru Poornima early in July. He made clear he knew what was to happen to his close servitors and warned them indirectly earlier the evening before the attack. Many people believe most firmly that Sai Baba can - when required - tune in to anyone's thoughts in his vicinity, or even at a distance, (I have had very convincing experience of this myself). If so, Sai Baba must have known what was approaching from the minds of the intruders. Besides, he has constantly claimed in public to know everything about everyone! He could have averted or altered this if Radhakrishna Menon had not chosen to go out, so why did he instead speak as if in riddles… why did he not simply say what the danger was? According to what the former Head of the Administration building told me a decade previously, Baba had once acted in a way I find interesting in this connection. To the one-time head of the ashram, Mr. Kutumba Rao, who received his first longed-for interview after 20 years waiting, was taken into the private room only to be told that a murderer was on the way to kill him and that he must leave the ashram immediately until further notice. He did leave at the time and was temporarily replaced by Mr. Chiranjia Rao (subsequently made a member of the Sathya Sai Central Trust). This covert obliqueness, however, is typical of Sathya Sai, of his very seldom making anything clear enough, or of clothing information in vague phrases, and very often in deceptive ambiguities. Of such arts he is truly a master.

Close servitor V. K. Narasimhan's doubts

Referring to the murders, the famous newspaper journalist, writer and editor, V.K. Narasimhan – even though under powerful pressures to conform while dependent on the ashram and Sai Baba personally - said openly on two occasions where the writer was present, and even before a small number of people, "What is the meaning now of the words 'Why fear when I am here'? They are a travesty."

The meaning can only be discovered an investigative spirit with honesty, conscience and – above all - sound independence of mind. In the presence of several persons at Sai Towers café (including myself, then the owner Mr. Padmanabhan, his business manager and the Australian Sai official Chris Parnell who was working for him on the magazine ‘Spiritual Impressions') V.K. Narasimhan said that he has questioned swami about the murder several times whose answers, he said three times loud and with emphasis, were “ not convincing!”

V.K. Narasimhan, who was present at the ashram and was himself in daily contact with Sai Baba from 1980 until shortly before his death in 2000, unburdened himself of shocking information in a lowered voice and in strict confidence to the present writer. Only after his death could I relate what I had learned (for the sake of protecting him in his very delicate and insecure position living in the ashram under Sai Baba's control).

See how V.K. Narasimhan revealed to me the true facts about the police executions - and see scans of the records I made at the time


Links to other articles on the 1993 Prashanthi Nilayam murder issue:-

1) How I came to learn of the blackmail by Sai officials behind the police executions of four intruder devotees from V.K. Narasimhan

2) More concerning the 1993 murders in the Prashanthi Nilayam Temple complex

3) Interview on BBC documentary 'The Secret Swami' with V.P.B. Nair, former home minister of Andhra Pradesh during the 1993 murders

4) IAS official V. Ramnath's reported account of Vijay Prabhu and the murder attempt here

5) Excerpts from Indian newspaper reports on the murders in Sai Baba's vicinity and the cover-up

6)Review of the cover-up and what cannot be denied

7)Prabhu's involvement reported from an IAS source

8) Murder coverage in 'The Week' (India) with explanatory diagram/drawing

9)Conny Larsson's recall of his learning in Puttaparthi about the 1993 murders

10)Writ petition to the High Court - Andhra Pradesh for investigation of the murders

11)Additional evidence from an independent source

Articles by the Indian Skeptic and rationalist Association of India's chief investigator of the 1993 murders episode, Basava Premanand who was burgled, attacked and worse as a result, see the BBC interview with him here Key points on the murders summarized - by B. Premanand Murders issue - a defamatory critic rebutted Further rebuttals about the murders Conclusive rebuttal about the murders Conclusive final rebuttal on the murders

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