Chennai: A battalion of 150 police personnel entered the Isha Foundation’s ashram in Thondamuthur on Tuesday after the Madras High Court ordered the Coimbatore Rural Police to conduct an inquiry and file a report, The Indian Express reported.
The order was issued after retired professor Dr S Kamaraj filed a habeas corpus petition alleging that spiritual guru Sadguru’s ashram held his two daughters Geetha Kamaraj (42) and Latha Kamaraj (39) captive.
Police personal led by an Additional Superintendent of Police alongside three DSPs carried out the probe.
It is reported citing a senior police officer that the focus of the inquiry was ‘verification of inmates and rooms at the foundation’.
Acknowledging the probe, the Isha Yoga Centre stated that police came to Isha Yoga Centre for general inquiry as per the court order, adding that police asked residents and volunteers about the lifestyle, how they came there and their stay.
Dr S Kamaraj accused the foundation of brainwashing individuals, ‘converting them into monks, and restricting their contact with their families.’
Justices S M Subramaniam and V Sivagnanam raised the contradictions in the life of ashram’s founder Jaggi Vasudev asking why he was encouraging other women to shave their heads to live as hermits at his yoga centres, while his daughter was married off and well-settled.
Dr S Kamaraj accused the foundation of holding his two daughters at the yoga centre against their will.
However, both women presented in the court they were staying at the centre of their own volition, denying any form of compulsion or detention.
The petition of Dr S Kamaraj expanded that his daughters prior to joining the ashram achieved professional accomplishments with his elder daughter being a postgraduate in mechatronics from a UK university, earning substantial salary before divorcing her husband in 2008.
Subsequently, she started attending the foundation’s yoga classes and her younger daughter, who was a software engineer, followed the path of her sister, choosing to stay at the yoga cetnre.
The petition accused the foundation of dulling the cognitive faculties of his daughter by administering food and medicines to them which led them to sever ties with their family.
The petition also referred to a POSCO case against a doctor working at the foundation, who is reportedly accused of having molested 12 girls studying in the Adivasi Government School.
Despite Kamaraj’s daughters insisted that they were staying voluntarily at the ashram, Justices Subramaniam and Sivagnanam asked ‘why a person who had given his daughter in marriage and made her settle well in life’, was encouraging others’ daughters to live the life of hermitess.