UK Law Lords’ Landmark Ruling On Sex Abuse

Breaking 400 years of precedents, Great Britain’s law Lords have ruled that it possible for those alleging sexual abuse to take legal action even years later.

One wonders whether the Manmohan Singh Government in India has the will or the capability of making such major changes in India. Certainly, it has made a beginning with its major study of child abuse in India. See my articles: Child Abuse. Landmark Indian Government Study. Abuse of Indian children ‘common’ and Child Abuse in India. Will Minister Renuka Chowdhury Act? and Dr Naresh Bhatia. Silenced Now In Indian Child Abuse Scourge

Whilst it is true - as activists (see below) make a point of urging - that such legal remedies are far too often the province of those who can afford it, nonetheless the existence of strong laws surrounding sexual abuse can help to influence further social reform. There has to be a strong constellation of responses. It is the case that, for example, many Nazi war criminals escaped the reach of formal justice. But this does not mean the the Nuremburg trials did not send powerful signals and highlight some very great evils.

Those who would attempt to somehow ‘wish’ evil away by averting the gaze and so-called ‘moving on’ help to perpetuate the very evils which they think they have little or no relationship to or responsibility for.

Especially among those who deem themselves ’spiritual’, there is a lot of confusion about the significant differences between forgiving and forgetting. See my articles: Bernie Banton Case. Mega Poor Can Fight Mega Rich and Dalai Lama: Forgiveness does not mean forgetfulness

The following are excepts from the BBC report Wednesday, 30 January 2008, 13:10 GMT 

Lords issue landmark abuse ruling

“Victims of sexual abuse may be able to sue their attackers after many years, following a ruling by the Law Lords. 

(Quote from Baroness Hale):

“A fair trial can be possible long after the event and sometimes the law has no choice”  

Leading child abuse lawyer Tracey Storey, of solicitors Irwin Mitchell, said the decision ended the “bizarre situation” which meant child abuse victims over the age of 24 could not sue their abusers.

David Greenwood of Jordans Solicitors, which also represents victims of child abuse, agreed that the ruling would “empower” people to come forward.

“Victims of sexual and physical abuse in care establishments can now be confident that even after many years they will be treated seriously and sympathetically by lawyers and the courts,” he said.

But Victim Support said that while it welcomed the ruling, it believed it would help only a small number of people.

“It’s very good news for her but the wider significance is questionable because the vast majority of offenders don’t have assets to chase,” said spokesman Paul Fawcett.

See Full Report

Hazards For Abuse Survivors Both Timid and Bold

Many abuse survivors are afraid to speak out.

Sai Baba’s proxy defenders on the Internet and elsewhere make the most of this difficulty. They say there have been no prosecutions of Sai Baba. Yet it often takes years or decades before survivors can come to terms with what happened to them.  

Hazards Of Brave Abuse Survivors

 

Even those few ready to face the public with the facts can often be in no position to litigate. This is because of lack of funds, time, energy, or family or close friends to support them in an intelligent and genuine manner.

In one case (See 1. under Further Resources) which should never have failed, a pro bono lawyer let his client down badly and was not proactive enough to field excellent witnesses who stood ready - indeed at various kinds of personal sacrifice - to testify.

Problems of Litigation Acute

In any case, litigation is always an uncertain, costly and often extremely drawn-out process, especially in sex abuse cases where the success rate is still far lower than in most other common crimes.

Sai Baba Heavily Protected In India.

Added to these huge obstacles, Sathya Sai Baba enjoys (as he has done for many decades) powerful protection from the Indian Government, judiciary and other power echelons from any prosecution, as attempts to bring him to book in the Supreme Court of India and High Court of Andhra Pradesh have amply demonstrated. (See 2. 3. and 4. below)

Further Resources

1. Alaya Rahm’s Lawsuit vs Sathya Sai Society of America - Joint Statement by the International JuST Group and the Rahm family

2. Sai Baba Protected By The Supreme Court Of India

The archive at this link contains a document with court proof - contrary to assertions of Sai Baba’s proxy defenders on the Internet - that a case was in fact brought. One of India’s top advocates, Kamini Jaiswal, took the case on behalf of Hari Sampath, and she and her assisting Counsel Prashant Kumar and Gaurav Agarwal and their client had to suffer the ignominy of a kangaroo court presided over by the profoundly compromised  judges: S.P. Barucha, A.S. Anand, G.B. Patnaik (or G.B. Pattnaik), and R.C. Lahoti. Each one of these went on to become Chief Justice of India. Their CJ at the time was P.N. Bhagwati, a very active member of the Sathya Sai Central Trust, well known for keeping a damper on Sai Baba scandals over many years. As a number of us know personally, when the legal notes for this case are shown in eminent legal quarters where mature democratic principles much more cohere, the lawyers are disgusted! We shall share the as yet unpublished details of this case with responsible media, legal authorities or academic researchers.

3. See my Corrupt Indian Judges Stonewall Case Vs Sai Baba. In 1986, a case B. Premanand brought in the Andhra Pradesh High Court shows a judge’s clear violation of India’s secular legal system. Judge Y.V.Anjaneyulu (who just happened to be a Sai Baba devotee!) pronounced,

“An article or ornament materialized from air in a split second by the use of spiritual powers or otherwise cannot be said to be made, manufactured, prepared or processed within the meaning of section 11 of the Gold Control Act”

See also, Satya Sai Baba and the Gold Control Act, by B. Premanand, 1986

4. My reader may be curious (or could simply guess) as to the outcome of the following. The news article is from the Deccan Herald, May 11, 1999:

“Hyderabad Nov 4: Justice G Raghu Ram of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Thursday admitted a writ petition seeking initiation of criminal prosecution against the doctors of the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Puttaparthi in Anantapur district alleging malpractices regarding the transplantation of kidney”

For the kidney donation scandal, See material HERE 

Probed On Male Sex Abuse, Sai Baba Evicts BBC TV Team

In Puttaparthi, 2004, a BBC This World television team led by producer Eamon Hardy was evicted from the Sai Baba Ashram for asking about the worldwide male sex abuse allegations that face Sai Baba.

Caught by BBC hidden camera: an angry and shouting Sai Baba’s world chairman, Dr Michael Goldstein. He dismisses the BBC interviewer’s point about organization accountability and transparency and says of the worldwide serial sex abuse allegations against Sai Baba, “I would know it in my heart because I am what I am – a consummate professional. Can you understand that?”

Fortunately, before they were summarily thrown out, the BBC crew had shot close up valuable footage that clearly shows Sai Baba faking the miraculous production of a pure gold Shiva lingam or lingodbhava - a ‘cosmic egg’ from his stomach. He then - there are no signs of him faking this - faints. A few minutes later, in but one of his many statements that question the rationality of his devotees as well as his own, Sai Baba told his vast audience,

“Out of the stomach emanated Shiva Lingas of the weight of three tonnes. That’s the reason why some strain on the face and the body“.

The final film documentary was The Secret Swami, which has been screened in many countries. 

BBC producers say that Sai Baba’s top officials at first thought, on their own entire assumption, the documentary would present a ‘positive image’ of their guru and the works of his organization to the world. Hence the rare permission for the BBC to shoot at Sai Baba’s ashram.

The ashram authorities extended highly guided tours to the BBC by Central Trust Secretary K. Chakravarthy and other leading officials, including the world head of the Sathya Sai Organization Dr Michael Goldstein of Covina, California, never before granted to a television corporation. In November or December 1997, Indulal Shah (then world head of the Sathya Sai Organization) told me that, over the years, a number of big overseas television companies had sought permission to shoot in the ashram but that ’Bhagavan had not permitted it’.

A few days into the film shoot, the BBC asked for a comment on the worldwide allegations against Sai Baba of sex abuse of young males. The ashram authorities then peremptorily ordered them to leave, and Dr Goldstein (who was in Puttaparthi at the time) sent a prompt  instruction to all Sai Baba centres throughout the world that no-one must cooperate with the BBC.

Haunted By Other Media Exposure

Quite apart from other exposure in leading media, the exposure by Denmark’s national television and radio broadcaster DR can only have haunted the minds of Sai Baba and his officials. This was in its 2003 documentary Seduced (renamed Seduced By Sai Baba in the English language version by Australia’s national multicultural broadcaster SBS), seen by millions in Denmark, Norway and Australia. At this time, the top Sai leaders in Denmark and Australia made unavailing threats of legal action. In Denmark Sai Baba’s leaders Thorbjörn Meyer and Jørgen Trygved, hiring the top litigation talent in the country, took, between them, as many as ten court actions, all of which failed. In a scene reminiscent of Dr Michael Goldstein’s angry outbursts caught by the BBC’s hidden camera, Thorbjörn Meyer, one of the highest ranking of Sai Baba’s world leaders had, I am reliably informed, to be ordered out of the office of the distinguished head of Denmark’s top national television and radio Director of DR, Christian Nissen.

So much for such cultist. From his grave, the perennially and sorely relevant Sir Karl Popper must be desperately trying to write an update of The Open Society and Its Enemies.

For Viewing

See The Secret Swami HERE. Available in broadband and modem

Further Reading

The BBC’s The Secret Swami - A Revision.
The Genesis of the BBC’s The Secret Swami (Sai Baba)

For a detailed examination relating to Sai Baba’s production of the Shiva lingam, see the article HERE. Its author Robert Priddy, was formerly head of the Sathya Sai Organization in Norway, and is a retired academic in Philosophy and Social Science from the University of Oslo.

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Cost Of Cover Ups Can Far Exceed Hoped-for Benefits

A great irony of cover-ups is this - that once they have been exposed, the initiators of the abuses sustain a cost far greater than would have attended the prompt admission of the initial misdeeds - and genuine, exhaustive measures to address the abuses. Tragically, “cost” may be multiply defined - and in far from money terms alone.

                             

And is there any Faith, major or minor, that is not sorely complicit in profound cover up of systemic sexual abuse?

                             

The present repercussions of the Los Angeles Catholic Diocese afford us a ready example. Questions are being raised about whether there is enough - after insurance and money from other Orders have been paid - for even a rich Diocese’s coffers to afford such a vast pay-out. This is but one diocese, and yet many others face, or have already faced, a similar predicament. Is there even a single one (as a BBC television news report would indicate) in which such allegations have not been raised?

The Editorialist in The Boston Globe, July 17, 2007, writes:

“The Los Angeles and Boston money could have been spent on other important projects if Mahony and Law had adopted a zero-tolerance policy against abuse when it first became a national issue for the church in the mid-1980s.

Catholic dioceses across the nation, including Los Angeles, have initiated thorough policies to prevent future abuse, and Mahony apologized to the victims on Sunday. Yet new policies and regrets aren’t enough. In the eyes of victims, the scandal will never be fully resolved as long as bishops who put the interests of their fellow priests over the protection of children remain in positions of leadership”.

‘Or who shall ’scape whipping’?

But is there any organization - anywhere - which has not covered up serious allegations? Can it be a good thing that when exposure of sexual abuse is discussed the Roman Catholic Church is so often the tarnished exemplar?

Another irony is that first whistleblowers are scapegoated but then public scapegoating can too easily turn on discretely ‘easy’ targets. And what more ‘easy’ than arguably the biggest religious monolith on the planet?

Does convergence of attention on a big institution help to prevent a much wider focus?

Naturally, of course, there is, at least, a chance for other organizations - before it is too late (if it is not already far too late!) for them to act without the courts forcing them to act - to learn from the fate of those churches or other organizations already strongly exposed?

Today, most societies are multicultural. Would it not make sense to take the broad approach, with not a single organization acting as though it, too, is unaffected? Or a wider public permitted to think that it has not its own accountability?

Further Major News Media Readings on the LA scandal and pay0uts are HERE, HERE and HERE.  Website of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) is HERE

See, Robert Priddy’s article ‘Spiritual’ Abuse. Quote:

“One US lady who has been raped by a priest broke down in tears on worldwide TV News (22/7/2007) while telling how she was not believed by her very own church community, which ostracised her. This ‘turning a blind eye’ has been very common, also in the Sathya Sai Organization”.

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Judge warned: Crippling disease won‘t stop pervert

Some devotees of Sathya Sai Baba - the ’God’ worshipped by so many of India’s top power brokers (and others beyond) who faces worldwide accusations of large-scale, serial sexual molestation of boys and young men - claim that he could not possibly offend, if he ever did, because of his age and physical incapacity, and that therefore his current accusers are caught in a palpable deceit. 

L. Ageing multiple rapist Wayne Chapman still Dangerous. (Boston Herald Photo Pool). R. An Ironside Sai Baba - not one to easily push around.

They offer no evidence concerning the nature of sexual capacity and ageing. Yet there is a mass of readings on the topic ‘ageing and sex’ in the popular press, let alone a wealth of information from Gerontology and Geriatrics. As ever, the Internet is an abundant source.  But why go looking for facts when there is a guru to defend at all costs? And the word ‘costs’ is more than appropriate, since Sai Baba’s worldwide cult has to defend many billions of dollars of investment in its notion that Sai Baba is about to rule the earth. Any dear reader who happens to be a billionaire, watch your money - Sai Baba is a consumate master in extracting it from you - without seeming to want it. See my article: Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia

Of course, making Champion of the World may require Sai Baba to take a little more than Viagra or Cialis. 

Extract from: Judge warned: Crippling disease won‘t stop pervert
By Laurel J. Sweet
Boston Herald. Friday, March 23, 2007

‘Aging and Sick Sex Offender to Be Civilly Committed?

Whatever the wisdom of civil commitment laws it would seem that this fellow might qualify.  Increasingly, though, the states are going to have to contend with the high cost of health care in keeping aging and sick convicts behind bars.

Even though his aging, bloated body is confined to a wheelchair, a judge was warned yesterday a 59-year-old convicted sexual predator remains dangerous to children. A forensic psychologist assured Lawrence Superior Court Judge Howard J. Whitehead that convicted child rapist Wayne Chapman, who bragged he had sexually molested between 50 and 100 boys and even fantasized about killing some of them, “presents a high and unacceptable risk to re-offend.” “It just doesn’t go away,” Christine Schnyder Pierce testified. Chapman, an interstate predator, has been incarcerated for 31 years. Having served his time, he is hoping to retire in Massachusetts, but the Essex District Attorney’s Office is fighting to have Whitehead civilly commit him for life as a “sexually dangerous” person’.

Further Resources

Wikipedia, Sexuality in older age

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The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire

Sai Baba’s ’showman empire’ is worth many highly unaccountable billions. Frequently, they pour to his Sathya Sai Central Trust from your country and mine. (See Rediff.com reference in my note, Sai Baba Exchequer Worth Billions. Many Countries Donate)

Media Empires Are More Effective

R to L. Media mogul’s mogul Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, a slight competitor, (Jane Fonda’s sweet Ex), Zee TV’s Subhash Chandra, Time Warners Dr Richard Parsons

But now, Sai Baba has been increasingly exposed to the world on television by the BBC, DR (Denmark), AZUL (Argentina), CBC (Canada), ABC,  SBS (Australia), and in the press - India Today, Times of London, Telegraph, Guardian, Age, Australian Financial Times, and newspapers in several parts of Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. This does not mean that any of these major institutions did a perfect job, or that there do not abound plenty of compelling stories, some of them tragic indeed.

We are now better able to see the Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire. But the core leaders of the ‘Secret swami’ (as the BBC has named him) are immensely powerful, and won’t go down without a fierce fight. Secret fierceness excercised by a cult connected with powerful and corrupt political figures is immensely devious, and consitutes a fine opportunity for crack investigative journalists.

No Edward Gibbon To Chronicle Sai Baba’s Decline and Fall - Yet

Surprising openings in a long-muzzled Indian media occurred November 2006, when Paul Lewis’s story broke in The Guardian - The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards. It raised concerns about the nexus between the Duke of Edinburgh Awards and the UK Sai youth, on their way in large numbers to see Sai Baba.

Awards, owing to, in this sort of issue, a not very experienced or competent UK CEO, Peter Westgarth - see HERE - was slow off the mark. However, after very high level representations from our side, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme trustees and Prince Philip’s Private Secretary, Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davies KCVO, CBE,

realized that a serious matter was at hand. Questions were also raised by some powerful citizens, including a former Home Minister, Tom Sackville. The Duke of Edinburgh Awards required of Dr G. Venkataraman, at an official Sai Baba website to take down the triumphant - but absurdly mistaken - information that the Duke of Edinburgh Award had been awarded to Sai Baba himself.

G. Venkataraman, formerly a member of India’s highly secret nuclear establishment, is Sai Baba’s deputy world head, who also directs Sai Baba’s international 7 days 24 hours satellite radio service via the WorldSpace international corporation. According to the Wikipedia entry for ‘Sathya Sai Baba’, its Director Dr Michael Nobel is “one of the patrons for the radio network” and “said that the radio network would spread Sathya Sai Baba’s message of global harmony and peace”. (With little sense of time’s passage the Wiki article says, absurdly, that Michael Nobel is the son of Alfred Nobel, who founded The Nobel Foundation and after whom the Nobel Prize is named)

An Imperial Puttaparthi Wishes To Penetrate Every Corner of Globe

Dr Venkataraman states:

“Sometime in September 2001, two distinguished visitors came to Sri Sathya Sai Super Speciality Hospital in Bangalore. They were Dr. Noah Samara, CEO, WorldSpace Corporation, and Dr. Michael Nobel, Chairman, Nobel Family Society, and a Member of the Board of Directors of WorldSpace. Dr. Nobel is the great grand nephew of Dr. Alfred Nobel, the founder of Nobel Prize … Who can deny the play of the “hidden hand”? Dr. Samara and Dr. Nobel were duly blessed with a Divine Interview, in the course of which Dr. Samara offered at the Lotus Feet an entire digital radio channel for broadcasting Swami’s Message of Love and Compassion to the entire world”.

Duke Versus Emperor. Edinburgh Beats  Puttaparthi

On November 4, 2006, The Guardian ran Paul Lewis’s story (see above). In a development that occurred quite without (a story perhaps to be told one day) The Guardian seeking it, in November 2006, The Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) managed to get a few major Indian media to take the feed on the Paul Lewis story. There have been decades of censorship of material adverse to the politically and religiously too-hot-to-handle Sai Baba and his vast and, in India, extraordinarily powerful Sathya Sai Organization. This feed also went to parts of Asia and the Middle East. It has been an absurd situation that NRI’s (Non Resident Indians) have been accessed in the media of many countries with large Indian diaspora to critical information about Sai Baba, when Indians in their own country have been denied.

Investigative Opportunities

The present writer (email:  bpittard(at)optusnet.com) can provide journalists and other investigators with a slew of media and academic contacts who can verify that the Sathya Sai Organization is a prime example of a cult in hiding from the media and others wishing to examine it. This is why the BBC obtained a difficult to gain sanction from its senior managment and Legals to use a hidden camera on the world chairman of Sai Baba’s orgnanization, Dr Michael Goldstein of Covina, California. (See BBC video footage HERE)

Without hazard to life and limb, astute, seasoned, well-briefed journalists should be able to slip unnoticed into Sai Baba ashrams and centers and other meeting places, and those of other cults. One financial journalist was about to investigate the vast money trails but got reassigned. Another, an award winning journalist from an Australian newspaper was, after weeks of intense investigation, about to front page when, at the last moment, his Editor-In-Chief spiked the story. A Can-West journalist had to modify his piece after heads of his newspaper got ensconced for hours with lawyers of a multi-millionaire advertizer with the same newspaper. However, many media have stood up to pressures from the Sathya Sai Organization senior brass.

Any temptation to obtain a good laugh from silly beliefs or practices should at all costs be avoided. It is no laughing matter that, for example, young people can get themselves horribly enmeshed in cult life, just as we can lose them via drugs and alcohol. Trustfully, by better awareness among broadcasters’ of their journalists getting too close to their stories, (BBC) John Sweeny-like confrontations will be avoided. See my article, Of Anger. BBC’s John Sweeney and the Scientologists.

The Emperor Without Clothes

At this link, in the article When ‘Divine’ Magnetism Becomes A Dead Weight, I provide but one example of the sort of craziness Sai Baba’s many supposedly educated devotees respond to in the manner of the subjects in the Hans Christian Anderson story The Emperor’s New Clothes. The George W. Bush medical advisor Professor Kanwaljeet ‘Sunny’ Anand, the birth scientist, stands as one of many examples around Sai Baba of those who desert their normal intelligence and range into the empirically absurd. There is a naked discrepancy which they, including Sai Baba’s more intellectual followers, see-but-don’t-see. Robert Priddy comments aptly on Sai Baba’s unscientific statements about magnetism and the nature of the atom HERE

Cult Awareness and Non-Cooperation Will Demolish Sai Baba’s Empire

According to the great British historian, Edward Gibbon (1737-1794):

“The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.” Chapter 33, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

But it will not be armies of barbarians who humble the showman emperor’s empire into dust. Quite apart from his implication in police killings in Sai Baba’s bedroom on June 6, 1993, and credible witnesses in many parts of the world with accounts that, taken together, depict Sai Baba as a large-scale serial sexual molester of boys and young men, it will not be alone the exposure in the wider public domain of his own recorded words and deeds that rocks his empire. Read his discourses - simply that - and the contradictions, the absurdly non-scientific and blundering historical statements (now excised where possible by his editors, but archived by Robert Priddy and Brian Steel, see below) will demolish him. The chances are that you will not be magnetized or God-ed by Sai Baba. He says he will rule the earth, but he cannot even rule the Duke of Edinburgh. Nor, breaking famous and widely publicized promises, can he transform India, which as UN and other studies have shown is in the grip of enormous corruption at virtually every level, and has abysmally failed to institute essential reforms. Nor has he been able to honor many years of promises that he is about to travel to other parts of the world - see, Will World Accept Sai Baba. He says yes. Very Soon

Wide-scale derision, not unmixed with scorn and some helpless laughter and refusal by civic, government, political and religious bodies to cooperate with the Sathya Sai Organization, which attempts to link up with respected mainstream institutions, will topple this ‘God’, and demolish his empire.

Further Resources

Useful are the websites of retired (or refreshed!) academics, Robert Priddy (Norway), HERE, and Brian Steel (Australia) HERE. See also Wikipedia reference under: ‘Robert Priddy’ HERE and his blogsite at: http://Robertpriddy.wordpress.com
There are also the general former devotee website at http://www.exbaba.com, with English, Dutch, Italian sections. Those at http://saiguru.net/ are in English, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Italian, German, Danish, Polish and Norwegian

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A Duke Stops An Emperor. Edinburgh Routs Sai Baba

HRH The Duke of Edinburgh is pictured before and after his harrowing linking with Sathya Sai Baba

It is intriguing to find that a mere Duke can stop an Emperor in his tracks.

To their considerable cost, the “secret swami” - as the BBC (see HERE for video footage) has called India’s and the world’s would-be Emperor Sai Baba, the core leaders of the Sathya Sai Organization know too well the stark factuality of the following.  Rank-and-file members cannot be expected to be told the facts. (The details below, including sharing some direct sources, I shall confirm for well-reputed, bona fide investigators, such as media and academics or their supervised thesis students):

1. Officials of The Duke of Edinburgh Awards and Buckingham Palace were upset by the boasting of those such as Dr G. Venkataraman and Shitu Chudasama about the Award connections. (Dr. G. Venkataraman is Sai Baba’s deputy world head, who also directs Sai Baba’s international 7 days 24 hours propaganda satellite radio service via the WorldSpace International corporation. See HERE. Shitu Chudasama is the UK Sai Baba national youth coordinator.
2. Superiors to Peter Westgarth, the Director of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, were of the view that he lacked, in this issue, both judgement and experience
3. When matters were finally taken in hand, both Awards and Palace dropped connection with the Sathya Sai Organization
4.  The official, Puttaparthi website - that is to say, a Sai Baba website senior to all other Sai Organization websites - was asked by the Royal authorities to take down the embarrassing and untrue material. The request was promptly complied with
5. Advice was received from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with a view to both avoiding any blowbacks in Anglo-Indian relations and further embarrassment to the Royal Family. The advice was:  drop them but not publicly.

6. Legal advice was also canvassed

Click on Link to see related story by Paul Lewis in The Guardian - The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards

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