Nithyananda case: DPS principal among 2 held

Blurb: More than 50 laptops, mobile phones, tablets, CPUs, pen drives and other electronic devices seized

Manas Dasgupta

Tribune News Service

Ahmedabad, November 21

The Gujarat Police today arrested the principal of the DPS (East) school in Ahmedabad and a caretaker of a building in which some child inmates of the Swami Nithyananda Ashram were allegedly kept in confinement as the Special Investigation Team intensified its search operations to unearth more skeletons from the absconding godman’s cupboard.

Principal of the DPS school Hitesh Puri, who had given the school land to run the Ashram without entering into any valid documents, was picked up by the police this evening. Search operations inside the Ashram premises, earlier during the day, revealed some illicit connections between the school and the administrators of the Ashram.

Later, the caretaker of the adjacent Pushpak City building Bakul Thakkar, who had leased out three flats to the Ashram, again without any documents, was also arrested by the police. The search operations revealed that the flats were used by the Ashram to keep some of child inmates in confinement so that they could not mix with others or run away.

The police had yesterday arrested two women administrators of the Ashram, the 30-year old Harini Chelappam, named by the Ashram as “Maa Nithya Pranpriya Nanda” and 24-year old Ridhhi Ravikiran, alias Maa Nithya Priyatattva Nanda, believed to be close associates of Swami Nithyananda. Both hailed from Mysore and were living in the Ahmedabad Ashram since it started on the DPS land at Hathijan on the outskirts of the city in January, this year. Both were sent to five days police remand by the court.

The police also seized more than 50 laptops, mobiles, tablets, CPUs, pen drives and other electronic devices which were allegedly used for digital propaganda of the “Swamiji” who is believed to be living in exile either in Trinidad and Tobago or in Ecuador. All the devices were sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory for analysis.

The police have also intensified the search operations to unearth the two “missing” women, Lopamudra and Nithyanandita, both daughters of complainant Janardan Sharma, whose alleged disappearance from the Ashram stirred the hornet’s nest. While Lopamudra has so far remained untraceable and is believed to be living with the Swamiji abroad, Nithyanandita was only seen in videos made viral on the social media repeatedly claiming “all well” in the Ashram and blaming her father for the “malafide campaign” against the Swamiji. In one of the videos, she claimed yesterday that her father was “pressurizing” her to file rape charges against the Swamiji, “but I refused to oblige him and disconnected his phone.”