'Land trafficking': Bolivia arrests self-styled godman Nithyananda
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New Delhi: The fugitive from India, who is wanted for criminal charges of sexual abuse and kidnapping, the self-styled godman Nithyananda, has been arrested in Bolivia over a land-grabbing case, The New York Times reported.
The man is known for building the ‘fantasy’ country named the ‘United States of Kailasa’.
According to the NYT report, Bolivian officials arrested 20 people linked to Kailasa, and they were arrested under charges of “land trafficking”. They allegedly signed illegal deals with indigenous groups in the Amazon to lease large land areas for 1,000 years. Authorities declared the agreements void.
The report furthered that the members of the ‘fantasy’ country Kailasa were deported to their home countries such as India, the United States, Sweden and China.
According to the report, the ‘Kailasa’ followers had arrived on tourist visas and managed to get a photo with Bolivia’s president, Luis Arce. However, there is no evidence that Nithyananda joined them there.
It is to be noted that representatives from ‘Kailasa once approached the United Nations in Geneva, asking what the global body could do to protect the “supreme pontiff of Hinduism” from persecution at “national and international levels”.
Nitthyananda, who is accused of rape, Kidnapping, torture and wrongful confinement of children in his ashram in Ahmedabad, had fled India in 2019. A year later, he resurfaced and claimed that he had found his nation on an island purchased off the coast of Ecuador.