Allegation of running sex rackets are also brought against internationally known Indian cricket player Sourav Ganguly. On July 30, 2009 Kolkata Cricket Circuit, a Bangla TV channel claimed to have carried out a sting operation on Sourav Ganguly’s city-based restaurant which was allegedly being used as a pick-up joint on weekends.
by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
(November 10, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) If you are in India and looking through the classified advertisement pages in local dailies, you are going to witnesses hundreds of such advertisements of so-called friendship club or even escort agencies, which are nothing but well-organized sex rackets in the country. Amongst South Asian nations, India possibly is one of the best places for tourism. In India, a large number of Westerners are also attracted towards godmen or Swamis, who run various types of Ashrams [Centers] in the country. International celebrities are also regularly visiting such temples, in the hope of finding ‘peace’. Decades back, the story of a godman named Bhagwan Rajnish, who was running lavish ashrams [which were virtual sex centers] in India drawing thousands of visitors from around the world. Disciples of Bhagwan Rajnish were taught to experience mental please through sex with multiple men and women inside the ashram during days and nights. Special rooms were built to house the visiting ‘devotees’ of Bhagwan Rajnish, where they would have sexual experience by paying certain amount of ‘donation’ to the ashram. Cocaine, Marijuana and other types of drugs were also in use in this center.
It is reported in various news media in India that, sex rackets are not only operating under the cover of friendship club or escort agency, but also several Hindu gurus [Spiritual Leaders] and Swamis are actively involved in such crime, through which they are making millions of dollars every year. There are similar allegations even against some of the local charitable organizations and NGOs.
In 2009 [September], Bhubaneswar police rescued 24 minor girls late last night from a shelter home run by a Chandrashekharpur-based NGO, Basanti Trust, after receiving a complaint that a sex racket was being run on the premises of the orphanage-cum-remand home. A domestic caretaker of the Basanti Trust said, “They would shoot dirty films and videos in the home and the practise was on for many months. Young girls would be sexually tormented and would be forced to either film or flee. When I protested, they raped me.”
Allegation of running sex rackets are also brought against internationally known Indian cricket player Sourav Ganguly. On July 30, 2009 Kolkata Cricket Circuit, a Bangla TV channel claimed to have carried out a sting operation on Sourav Ganguly’s city-based restaurant which was allegedly being used as a pick-up joint on weekends.
Local TV news channel, Channel 10, claimed to have exposed a "sleaze racket" that was allegedly being run out of the third floor lounge bar of the Park Street restaurant Sourav's - jointly owned by Ganguly brothers, Sourav and Snehashish. The channel kept playing visuals of what it claimed showed dance girls "negotiating with customers" of the restaurant's disco.
According to the channel, the managers of Sourav's have been running weekend late-night dance shows at the lounge bar, where an agent allegedly sets up the girls with customers for "flesh trade".
In 2009, a Hindu Swami [godman] was arrested for running high-profile sex racket, involving cine-stars and celebrities, and the man was making millions every month. It was also alleged that the Swami was involved in money laundering activities. Ranging from the benign to the bogus, magical to the mafia, fakers to the fakirs, and spiritual to the sleazy, godmen of all kinds exist in India. Thousands of Indians put their trust in them but few can imagine that most revered godmen are common criminals who are instrumental for money-laundering rackets. The business of faith, which mushroomed across India like an epidemic in the past 10 years, has actually turned into a business of peddling false hopes. Yet as it is, gullible people continue to fall at these godmen's feet to seek divine solutions.
Today, there are a number of self-appointed godmen in India, usually found wearing a saffron robe with a string of rudraksh beads around their necks and sporting a long beard. At times, they can be seen carrying a T-shaped wooden staff to rest their arms on.
There is no dearth of such godmen — otherwise called "baba", "guru", "sant" or "swami" — in India, who claim to communicate directly with God and possess powers of forecasting events. But invariably, some of these godmen live a secret life — one which involves the dark world of free sex and an unimaginable amount of unaccounted for money, often stashed in ashrams [spiritual centers] or unknown destinations.
What is even more worrying is the fact that many such swamis or godmen enjoy the patronage of almost all political parties who try to use their clout to mould public opinion in their favor.
Enter the four-storey ashram of Chandraswami, the "spiritual advisor" of late Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. You can feel the security system monitoring your every movement through strategically installed video cameras, with Chandraswami himself keeping a tab on you from his private chamber.
Chandraswami sits on a pedestal in his baroque marble-covered ashram in South Delhi, wearing a sparkling white dhoti, kurta and silk angavastram, with a large sandalwood tilak prominent on his forehead.
"Chandraswami was a small fry but his real fast metamorphosis from an ordinary ‘sanyasi' to king-maker was the result of his close friendship with late Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. But it was only during the Lakhubhai Pathak case that the Chandraswami-Rao alliance became public," Pandit R. K. Bhardwaj, a renowned tantric of India, said.
Bhardwaj has created a series on the brutal practices of tantra for a private TV channel — running for over five years — and hundreds of other documentaries on the subject. Among Chandraswami's staunch devotees are Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi, billionaire Sultan of Brunei, actress Elizabeth Taylor, two African presidents and hundreds of Indian politicians and industrialists.
"Chandraswami boasts of his ability to read minds and cast spells. But his actual abilities are known to few. He exploits the gullibility of his high profile followers and maneuvers them in a way that they don't ever realise that they have been duped," Arvind Guruji, a so-far untainted Gujarati Brahmin-turned Sufi religious leader, who runs a sprawling ashram in Kapashera, South-West Delhi.
The riveting tales of rapist godman Premananda, or the dalliances of Kanchipuram Devanathan within the temple premises have certainly not faded from the public's memory.
Pilot-turned-guru Pilot Baba — who previously even fought in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war — is famous for performing underwater and underground samadhis [graveyards], claiming to have done this 100 times over. Devotees from all parts of the country come to seek special healing powers from him.
More recently, Swami Paramahamsa Nithyananda's amorous acts were captured on camera when a sting operation revealed the spiritual leader in an alleged sex scandal with a Tamil actress. Nithyananda, who claims to be a celibate, runs the Nithyananda Mission which is part of a world-wide movement for meditation and peace.
Similarly, Shiv Murat Dwivedi alias Ichchadhari sant swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale, who was arrested in New Delhi recently, has been accused of using the guise of spirituality to lure young women into prostitution [such as air hostesses, celebrities, models, college students and housewives], from which he cashed billions.
The 39-year-old self-styled godman allegedly orchestrated a sex racket, running into billions of rupees, by involving air-hostesses, college students and housewives. Investigators say Dwivedi had built cave-like structures in a temple he built in South Delhi's Khanpur. After the arrest, Shib Murat Dwivedi has claimed that he was suffering from schizophrenia i.e. split personality, and had no idea what his evil twin was doing.
"He used the guise of spirituality to run an organised prostitution racket since 1999 and has made billions of rupees by supplying women to his high-profile clients," said a police officer.
"He would force young women to join the sex racket, offered them money, expensive gifts and had even provided them with cars."
Starting with a small Sai Baba temple in Badarpur, investigators believe he gradually started a flesh trade on the premises.
Likewise, another "saint" from Gujarat, Asaram Bapu, is believed to have a "hypnotic" personality which has "attracted" millions of devotees from all corners of the globe, transcending social barriers.
According to Jignesh Patel of Ahmedabad who was a disciple of Asaram, "in all my years as a sadhak [follower], close to 99 per cent of everyone I knew experienced a strong sense of inadequacy.
"Not only does Asaram and company play upon the natural human fear of death but they also entice poor people from Orissa, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and other backward areas by promising an inner spiritual journey and eventually making them rebel against their own families... “
Such gullibility concerning godmen is a truly pan-Indian phenomenon. The Gujarat government recently admitted in the Assembly that Asaram Bapu's ashram has encroached upon 67,099 square metres of land in Ahmedabad. The collectorate is currently dealing with the issue. For the record, there are about 225 ashrams and more than 1,500 Yoga Vedanta Seva Samitis [various committees] across the world run by Asaram Bapu and company.
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