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Chennai: In a shocking incident, the top-ranking Hindu pontiff revered by one and all, high and low, at whose feet the country's who's who come in line wanting to prostrate, the Sankaracharya of Kanchi Peeth, Sri Jayendra Saraswati, was, it is unbelievable to report, taken into custody by a Tamil Nadu police team on Thursday night in Mehboobnagar, 90 km from Hyderabad, where he was on tour, implicating him, ironically, in the murder of.a manager
of Varadaraja Perumal temple in Kanchipuram, Sankararaman, on September 3. The Swamigal has been remanded in judicial custody in Vellore jail till November 26 by a magistrate in Kanchipuram. The police team, comprising fully armed commandos, first went in a Cessna aircraft to Bangalore on information that the Sankaracharya was on tour there. From there they reached Mehboobnagar by road where the seer was actually performing a Trikaal pooja and he was taken into custody then and there. The police drove him to Hyderabad, and was flown to Chennai before arriving in Kanchipuram, where he was produced before the magistrate. A few months before Sankararaman was murdered, a gold chain from the sannidhi (sanctum sanctorum) of the idol of Lord Varadaraja Swamy's consort at the Kanchipuram temple of which he was a manager was reported missing. This had created panic among the temple priests. Looking like conspiratorial, the police personnel enquiring into the murder case produced some evidence apparently linking arrested assailants to certain employees of the Sankaracharya mutt, also in Kanchipuram, as ground to implicate the saint, who is the head of the mutt. Those arrested were Pandian (22), Satish (22), Arumugam (22), Arun (25) and Devaraj (33). Sankararaman was an employee of the mutt till a few years ago and after leaving it had been levelling accusations against the peeth.
The Swamigal's custody is likely to have political repercussions as the
Sankaracharya was thought by many as being close to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister
J Jayalalithaa and her ruling AIADMK party, and the Dravidian Opposition
leader Karunanidhi has all along been baying for the seer's blood attributing
castist discrimination in the pontiff's thoughts. The Sankaracharya had
also played a key role in 2002 to resolve the Ayodhya issue. |
