Chennai: A Madras High Court bench was told on Thursday that six people had gone missing from spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev’s Isha Foundation in Coimbatore since 2016, The News Minute Reported.
The matter was informed, when the court was hearing a habeas corpus plea filed by a man as his brother has been missing for a year.
The TNM citing the police reported that five out of the six missing people were found.
Four of those missing were tourists who lost their way as they had trekked the Velliangiri hill forming part of the Western Ghats.
The fifth person to go missing was a woman whose body was reportedly found in a well in January 2023.
The police records said the first person to go missing was Tiravuayya on July 19,2016 and police found him July 27, 2016.
On February 2017, 29-year-old Karthik went missing and was reportedly found on March 18.
Almost two years later on April 6, 2019, Ramesh Kumar, a 38-year-old man went missing.
The police found him one and a half years later, on November 27, 2020.
In another incident in August, 2022, a 23-year-old man identified as Aswin Ram vanished and was found within a day.
‘All the four men were those who lost their way while trekking up the mountain. They would visit the Isha foundation to see the Adi Yogi statue and then start their trek. But their cases are not linked to the Isha foundation itself,’ TNM quoted sources as saying.
In the fifth missing case, a 34-year-old woman Subashree disappeared in December 2022 after attending a yoga class at Isha.
Police later found her dead in a well in Semmedu, located five kilometres away from the yoga centre.
In March 2023, Volunteers with Isha Yoga centre reportedly lodged a complaint at Alandurai police of a volunteer missing.
The First Information Report (FIR) reportedly said Ganesan, a volunteer at Isha since 2007, was last seen at the Yoga centre on February 28, 2023.
He is reported to have taken an auto at night and reached the Poondi temple at the base of the Velliangiri hills and went missing.
After volunteers alerted his family, Ganesan’s brother Thirumalai filed a habeas corpus plea before the Madras HC.
Even though special teams were deployed for search on the Velliangiri hills, Ganesan has not been traced yet.
The report said that the police, following the court’s direction, will file a detailed reported on the missing cases before the next hearing on April 8.