Clarity – The Treasure Sathya Sai Baba Denied His Devotees

There is nothing quite like clarity.

Here is an excellent English-language Indian television report. It is good to see ordinary people who live and work in Puttaparthy being mined for their views. They have large concerns about the veracity of Sathya Sai Central Trust officials. My reader might like to look at the far more convincing body language at the interviewees in the streets of Puttaparthi, than of Sathya Sai Central Trust officials:

Sai Baba Trust money: Puttaparthi wants clarity

(For this NDTV report, click on title above or on photo below)

Puttaparthi citizens have grave trust issues about Sai Central Trust

In the archives of various movements of dissent against authoritarian cults, there is, perhaps, nothing that so frequently recurs and obscures clarity like bad old-fashioned blindness to the testimony of those who have raised their voices. Dissenters almost get used to the strong tendency to fallacious argument, or else the refusal to study any writing which remotely questions the adherents’ rigid belief system.

Until citizens suffer – very often from the involvement of their children or close friends in cults – they themselves have another sort of blindness. It is a perilous naiveté. Clearly, the time to address a threat to civil society is at that stage one may call ‘the Weimar Republic Stage’. Otherwise, in worst case scenarios a Hitler arises and holds sway. Even a little blindness can make people stumble.

Sathya Sai Baba devotees may try all they like to avert their devotion-steeped gaze from all the scandal revelations of the last weeks. First, Sai Baba died in a year very different to his widely known prediction of AD 2022. Then came official Sathya Sai websites carrying Procrustean, mangled and fallacious attempts to confuse issues about Lunar and Solar calendar dates. The ‘reasoning’ was so flawed that an alert high school student in clear-thinking exercises could rebut the poor logic, and spot how Sai Baba officials conveniently depart from the usual calendar reckonings in Sai literature.

Soon, the world was treated to reports about the opening of Sai Baba’s rooms, from which he had, it is said, barred all but his paramour, Satyajit, his favoured successor. Lo, dazzling riches enough to make old King Midas or Croesus don their darkest sunglasses.

The next days brought repeated finds of vast hidden treasures. The state police and government were involved, and we saw clear public proof of false and contradictory statements by Sai Central Trust officials. This was exposed in newspapers and television for millions in India to see. There were vast millions in various currencies. Heavy loadings of gold, silver, precious gems. Out-of-date choice foods, and luxury goods mouldered away. 

In regard to putrescence, I was reminded of the decaying mansion of Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens’ novel, “Great Expectations”. See: When Perfumes Reek: Lavish Scents, Shampoos etc., Among Sai Baba Secret Treasure Hoard

     

     

Sai Baba’s vast, secret treasure and rotting luxury food items hid behind external opulence

So much for Sathya Sai Baba’s and his officials historic claims that he never accumulated wealth and, moreover that “every naya paisa” is accounted for.

“For my sake (believe it or not) do not spend a naya paisa. Though 56 years have passed, I have not got even one shirt or gown stitched for Me. I am now wearing what is given by a student…” (Sathya Sai Speaks Volume XV. page 312.)

“Right from a tender age, I never received anything from others. I only give and give and give, I never receive.”
(Sanathana Sarathi October 1998, page 275)

Soon after the Yajur Mandir haul, large amounts of currency were transported, under great secrecy, with the full knowledge of the ashram’s head of security, Pradhan, from Puttaparthi in a van and a passenger bus. This lead to police arrests of the couriers – (See newpaper report below) “Harish Nandasetty, who was caught carrying Rs 35.5 lakh in a Toyota Qualis at Kodikonda checkpost on Saturday night, before Hindpur Judicial First Class Magistrate Kamalakar Naidu. He was remanded in judicial custody till June 27 and the seized cash was handed over to the court. The other two – Chandrasekhar and Sohan Setty – were also produced before the magistrate and were remanded in judicial custody”.  Questioned for many hours were the Trust’s V. Srinivasan and R.J. Ratnakar (Sathya Sai Baba’s nephew). Has my reader noticed how it is the lower ranks who mostly get copped, and not the Mr Bigs?

Darkness still surrounds the issue about the money found on the bus, its original ownership and eventual destination or how such money can be moved about without accountability to any government authority, such as Inland Revenue. Or indeed any typical arrangement like an armoured security vehicle, with trained and armed security personnel. Or why such huge amounts were in cash and not in cheque form, as stated hitherto by the Trust. Commandeered Puttaparthi records themselves disproved the Trust’s story about donations by 12 donors.

No matter that the van and bus episodes came right on the heels of the discovery of many millions in currency and the gold, silver, precious gemstones and many other valuables that abounded in hiding places in Sai Baba’s private quarters, Ratnakar constantly harped, amid smiles of reassurance, on the transparency issue, when all the evidence argued an appalling lack of transparency and the biggest of messes. Ratnakar is the man who has worked to prevent Sai Baba’s favourite, Satyajit, from leadership of the Trust.

Trust public statements are now very few and ever more highly sanitized. A snippet on the heels of over five hours of police questioning Ratnakar got out in only one newspaper, as far as my internet searches could find. Other bulletins said how he gave no interview following his “grilling”. Then came news that Srinivasan gave no statement immediately after his five hours plus of police “grilling”. I search in vain for any since. At the time, I wrote:

“But how does one explain Trust workers clandestinely moving – in a van and in a bus – such vast amounts? In fact, right on the heels of the discovery of multi millions of cash, gemstones and other valuables secreted in walls and ceiling spaces and wherever else in Sai Baba’s bedroom? One may smile at the sheer gall, if not the dark arts of it all. Who are these donors? If the donations were genuine, what sort of security did they get for all their no doubt hard-earned money? An armoured vehicle? Nothing of the sort. Just the two Trust agents, the brothers Shetty,  one in a Qalis van, the other, at a different time, in a passenger bus.

Where, too, has gone any semblance of the Sathya Sai Central Trust’s duty of care for the safety of life and limb of its  workers on a money transportation assignment fraught with danger? This, in an area with trained eyes not only of individual criminals, criminal gangs, and private armies of feudal landlords but of ubiquitous, highly organized, armed political struggle groups such as the Naxalites (with countless splinter groups), the so-called Peoples’ War Group or PWG, etc. Many police and security authorities complain of the emasculation by Andhra Pradesh state politicians of state security and police cadres capable of action, and the pipe dream of thinking that negotiation and accommodation are going to work.

Why the earlier Trust assertions that donations are dealt with by cheque? Why such vast amounts of loose cash? Where is the accountability and transparency in all this?”

Writers on the Sathya Sai saga, like Robert Priddy, Brian Steel and myself have long exposed the tissues of lies that Sai Trust officials spin to devotees at large and to others. But what devotees were prepared to use their critical faculties in the least? Very few indeed. Against all their knowledge down the years that we were not (as Sai Baba said of us) ‘Demons’, ‘Judases’, and that we had paltry money motives, they mindlessly preferred to listen to the deceitful avowals of leaders such as Indulal Shah, Dr Michael  Goldstein – see: Sathya Sai Baba Chief, Dr Goldstein, Explodes. “I am the consummate professional” (See Film Clips), Dr G. Venkataraman, and so on – see:Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard On Dr G. Venkataraman – Sathya Sai Baba Global Propagandist

                 From the Telegraph, Calcutta article “Open Sesame! Baba and his chamber of secrets”

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Puttaparthi: Prashanti Nilayam CSO arrested

Tuesday 21 June 2011

Police today  arrested Chief Security Officer (CSO) of Prashanti Nilayam, as part of their ongoing probe into the cash flow from Puttaparthi to Bangalore.

 According to sources, during investigation, it was found that Pradhan, a retired Air Force official, brought Rs 35.5 lakh out of Yajurveda Mandir, Sai Baba’s personal chamber, and handed it over to Sathya Sai Central Trust members RJ Ratnakar and V Srinivasan at the Shanti Bhavan. The cash was in turn given to Chandrasekhar, driver of Srinivasan, and later, was passed on to Sohan Setty and Harish Nanda.

The trio was caught by the police on Saturday night while transporting the cash to Bangalore. Police are likely to serve notices on Ratnakar and Srinivasan in a day or two, the sources said.

Meanwhile, Prashanti Nilayam was stunned into silence following the cash seizures in the last two days and disclosure by the police that the flight of capital from Puttaparthi to Bangalore was traced to some of the Sathya Sai Trust members.

Penugonda DSP Kolar Krishna, investigating officer of the case, produced Harish Nandasetty, who was caught carrying Rs 35.5 lakh in a Toyota Qualis at Kodikonda checkpost on Saturday night, before Hindpur Judicial First Class Magistrate Kamalakar Naidu. He was remanded in judicial custody till June 27 and the seized cash was handed over to the court.

The other two – Chandrasekhar and Sohan Setty – were also produced before the magistrate and were remanded in judicial custody.

On Sunday, Sathya Sai Trust member and Sai Baba’s nephew RJ Ratnakar had contradicted the police and claimed the trust had nothing to do with the cash. He had also claimed that 12 devotees of Baba, linked to the cash seizures, would explain themselves either to the court or the police by Monday. “No one has either approached us or contacted us till now. The cash belongs to the trust,” the Penugonda DSP said.

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Further Reading

Oprah Winfrey Show On Male Sexual Abuse: Sathya Sai Baba Cult Survivors Should Watch

Posted by Barry Pittard on July 21, 2011

Another Sathya Sai Baba Multi Million Haul Found At Puttaparthi

Posted by Barry Pittard on July 20, 2011

Young Male Sex Abuse: Legal ‘Locomotive’ Hurtles Towards Sai Baba’s Accomplices

Posted by Barry Pittard on July 19, 2011

Young Male Sex Abuse: International Legal Challenge Will Confront Key Sathya Sai Baba Men

Posted by Barry Pittard on July 19, 2011

Towards Accountability Of Sathya Sai Baba’s Accomplices: A Call To Legal Action

Posted by Barry Pittard on July 16, 2011

For Those Connected With Sathya Sai Education Institutions: A Reckoning Time

Posted by Barry Pittard on July 16, 2011

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

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