Murder and repentance at Prashanthi Nilayam

Sathya Sai Baba’s pet ‘dacoit’ – a violent, bribe-demanding gatekeeper

The one-time dacoit, Kumar, was reported by Prof. N. Kasturi in the official biography as having been fetched from a group of bandits whom Baba surprised in the hills in his younger days and allowed to be a watchman at his ashram. He became the main gate watchman at Prashanthi until he was killed on ashram premises in early 1987.

Two differing accounts of his death have circulated. The most convincing one I got was a day or so after the event while at Prashanthi Nilayam. Devotee Alfred Brinnand told me, having got the details from his ashram contact, who I also met – a seriously handicapped man from Malaysia who was a long-term resident (in a ground floor apartment in West 4 block), both of whom spoke Hindi. They told that the watchman Kumar was a very primitive type who extorted bribes from poor Indians to let them enter the ashram, and was imperious and even used his stick to beat persons he could intimidate. (In fact, I had seen him myself some days earlier hitting Indian followers with a stick when they had stepped out of line during morning nagarsamkirtan).

Examples of Shiva priests

The Shiva priest approached him while sitting outside the accommodation office and pretended to want to apologise to him and make amends. He humbly asked to take padnamaskaar of Kumar where he sat on the bench. When he put his mouth to Kumar’s feet, however, he bit his big toe clean off, having filed, sharpened, pointed teeth as some Shiva priests have to bite the heads of cockerels etc. Superstition about Shiva priests who live in graveyards or at burning grounds is very intense among ill-educated Indians – and even among some educated ones too.  It was said that Kumar was flatly refused entry to the small Sai hospital and died, allegedly of shock, within three days in Bangalore.

The other account by V. Ramnath of the Indian Administrative Service he hard heard at third- or forth-hand was told me by him in 1996.  Ramnath said that Kumar was killed by Sai Baba’s former favourite cook – a long-term worker in the Prashanthi Nilayam Indian canteen who was a strongly anti-Muslim Hindu. (I knew who he was and once heard him shouting insults about Islam as if he was near beserk). The killing of Kumar in this version was supposedly done in self-defense, because Kumar had threatened him and later assaulted him in the grounds of Baba’s parents’ so-called ‘Samadhi’ shrine in Puttaparthi just beyond the ashram itself. Kumar was allegedly knifed to death with a large kitchen knife either then or later on.

Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘blessing’ for ‘repentance’ – perverting the course of justice, as usual:
In both reports, however, the guilty party was said to have gone straight to Sathya Sai Baba to beg forgiveness. Which he was granted. The killer (whether a Shivite or the cook?) was given money (by whom is unclear) and told to leave the ashram and to stay in some village until further notice. The person later returned to the ashram as usual. No one was arrested or charged with the killing. Which account is true, or whether both incidents occurred (perhaps in sequence), is not known to me. But Kumar did disappear suddenly.

Subsequently, when Kumar’s room in the small watchman building (a square concrete blockhouse) once found just inside the gopuram gate was cleared, 50,000 rupees in small denominations were found behind the picture of Baba, Brinnand said. This money had been extorted from visitors to the ashram, mostly poor Indians. Kumar’s use of his stick on defenseless visitors and also on beggars etc. and had become a general tyrant, having made a lot of enemies within the ashram and outside. He once locked up an American girl in his room for a long period, but had to release her eventually.

The temporary head of the ashram at that time in February 1987 (Chiranjia Rao – deputising for Kutumba Rao) carried out regular surveillance of persons who mixed too freely with certain talkative residents, and were especially vigilant in suppressing such contacts after the brutal Kumar’s murder.

The Avatar’s ignorance and powerlessness?
After this discovery, Alfred Brinnand told me that Sai Baba was visibly furious with the then head of ashram (Kutumb Rao) and his assistant (Chiranjia Rao) when they approached him on the verandah, and he said the reason was that they had not discovered Kumar’s crimes. Strange indeed, however, when the self-trumpeted Omnipotent, Omniscient Sathya Sai Baba has himself appointed this violent crook to guard his gate for him!

There are many devotees – the well-deluded true believers without conscience -who will think something like this: “Swami let this man carry on as a lesson to those who he maltreated, they must have deserved it. It was their karma. Besides, Swami’s ways are inscrutable and who am I to question him?”

This indicates something about how dangerous this secretive and unaccountable personality cult is: it deranges minds and perverts truth and justice.

See also a few of the many serious cover-ups at Sai Baba ashrams – murders, suicides, accidents…