Jalandhar: Police deployment has been doubled at a dera or ashram in Punjab after tension over a High Court order to cremate a guru whose body has been kept in a freezer there for the last 11 months. His followers have refused to perform last rites insisting that Ashutosh Maharaj is in "samadhi" or deep meditation.

On January 29 this year, doctors had said that Maharaj was "clinically dead." His followers have since then not allowed anyone to inspect the body, which is kept in the freezer at the ashram in Nurmahal near Jalandhar. A dera spokesperson said they would appeal against the High Court's order this week to cremate the body within 15 days.

"We have decided to appeal against the High Court order to a double bench...we believe our guru is in deep meditation," he said.

The police report a significant increase in the number of people visiting the ashram every day. "Daily about 3000 followers are visiting the ashram...some 500-700 are present during the night," a senior policeman Satish Malhotra said.

He also said that there are seven or eight licensed weapons inside the ashram.

As the Punjab Police plans how best to implement the high court's order to cremate the body within 15 days, it says it does not want to take chances and will draw its lessons from the recent two-week stand-off at an ashram n neighbouring Haryana, where the self-styled godman Rampal had sequestered himself along with weapons, a private army and many followers to evade arrest.

Rampal's followers had clashed with the police, which had to storm the 12-acre ashram to arrest the controversial guru. Five women and an infant died during the stand off.

Ashutosh Maharaj headed the Divya Jyoti Jagriti Sansthan sect, which allegedly has property and assets running into hundreds of crores. A man called Dilip Kumar, who claims to be Ashutosh Maharaj's son, had moved court seeking custody of his body to perform last rites.

Originally posted here:
At This Ashram, A Guru's Body in a Freezer, Angry Followers and Some Weapons

Swami Satyananda Saraswati.

Children living at Australia's oldest yoga ashram were starved, tortured and drugged, according the evidence presented at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Families who brought their children to the Satyananda Yoga Ashram in the 1970s and 1980s thought they were giving them a better life but the commission heard the youngsters were subjected to horrific sexual and physical abuse.

A former child resident, given the pseudonym APK, told the commission she was forced to expose her genitals to ashram members and drugged with morphine for minor ailments.

History: Satyananda is Australia's oldest yoga ashram. Photo: Shane Arnold

She said she witnessed the torture of children as young as four after she moved to the ashram with her family when she was aged nine in 1978.

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Her older sister, given the pseudonym APL, told the commission that sexual activity was banned at the ashram and those who disobeyed were punished by its leader Swami Akhandananda Saraswati.

Children went on what they called "f--- patrol" across the ashram's grounds at Mangrove Mountain on the central coast to see if any adults were being intimate.

"If Akhandananda found out that any of the swamis were having sex with each other he would publicly shame them and sometimes beat them," she said.

Read more from the original source:
Ashram children told to spy on adults having sex, royal commission hears