V.K. Narasimhan – shattering revelations on the murders

V.K. Narasimhan was quite a national figure in journalism before he came to Sathya Sai Baba, having held many editorial chairs. He had a reputation for having put his life on the line for the truth about the 1975 Emergency, and so he was initially VERY important in helping various influential Indian circles to accept Sai Baba…. for VKN knew all the leading figures and had attended college and subsequent activities with Presidents and Prime Ministers. He was a Mylapore Brahmin (as was R.K. Narayanen, a friend of his also of that highest caste). He began to mix with the Indian elite since he was released from prison as a follower of Gandhi before Indian Independence. He became a central figure for visiting plenipotentiaries at the ashrams, still wondering why Sai Baba was so kind to him.

Unassumingly, Narasimhan constantly helped satisfy Sathya Sai Baba’s insatiable appetite for social and political influence.  In his role as a kind of mediator for Sathya Sai Baba he actually became something of a genuine devotee in his latter years. VKN was, however, most skeptical about the Sathya Sai Organisation and its inflated claims under its former International Chairman, Indulal Shah., most of which he considered largely  a front for spiritual go-getters who only wanted Sai Baba’s approval and ‘blessings’.

The most shocking information I ever received was from VKN – in January 1997 – was how Sai Baba’s multi-millionaire younger brother, Janaki Ramiah  had – after lengthy negotiations with the Puttaparthi police – blackmailed them into executing the four intruders (armed with knives) who were holed up in Sai Baba’s bedroom apartment.

No one closely involved in that notorious episode dared to tell what they know. However,  Narasimhan told me many details in private and that he was present when Janaki Ramiah was congratulated for the results of his blackmailing activity by the former Home Minister of India, S.B. Chavan, and who replied, “Dead men tell no tales”, upon which these two laughed heartily! Narasimhan was very disturbed,  lowering his voice to a whisper when he told me. Though I tried my utmost to explain this away and somehow clear Sai Baba of any involvement, the evidence was finally too overwhelming.

V.K.N. also told me how Sai Baba put him under strong and repeated pressure to lie about the embezzlements of the secretive Sathya Sai Central Trust unearthed by the press in 1993 after the murders. Though he argued his case, he had seen no way out of the repeated demands and wrote an article clearing the Sai organisation in the newspaper where his son was then the editor (The Tribune, Chandigarth). His former newspapers – The Hindu and the Indian Express – had refused to publish his (false) testimony.  (See here) (Not entirely without relevance is the fact that his son, V.N. Narayanan, was later sadly disgraced throughout the Indian press, having directly plagiarised materials for his column from Brian Appleyard of the Sunday Times That cost him the editorship of the Hindustan Times and his previous prestigious career in journalism.