JOIN USNithyananda resigns as Dhyanapeetam head
Nithyananda’s departure comes nearly a month after a Tamil TV news channel broadcast secretly filmed videos of the godman having sex with a Tamil actress.
In the course of the past month, intense media pressure, including Deccan Herald’s investigative reports on how Nithyananda may have forged his birth documents, his supposed education in a Vellore polytechnic college as well as his land holdings, contributed significantly to his decision to step down as head of a cult organisation, headquartered at Bidadi near here.
On Monday, Deccan Herald reported that complaints against Nithyananda have also been filed in California.
In a statement released on his organisation website, Nithyananda said: “I have decided to live a life of spiritual seclusion, for some indefinite time, to which the acharyas have agreed in principle.”
The godman appears to have taken this decision after the Karnataka High Court refused to close the police investigations based on criminal cases filed against him at Bidadi police station.
In his statement, Nithyananda says that a board of trustees consisting of sadhakas of Dhyanapeetam “who non-controversial will henceforth manage” the organisation.
He said that he has “requested” the acharyas to “help the newly-constituted trust reorient the activities of Dhyanapeetam increasingly to undertake spiritually oriented service activities and to guide the trustees”.
Significantly, the trust that was at supposedly at the helm of affairs comprised only three persons - Nithyananda, his trusted secretary Swami Nithya Sadhananda, alias T Dhanasekaran, who has also gone into hiding, and Sadhananda’s wife Jamuna. The 22 acres of land over which the Bidadi ashram is built is solely in the name of Nithyananda and not the trust.
Nithyananda claims in his statement that he arrived at his decision following discussions and after seeking counsel from “leading acharayas of Hindus Dharma at Hardwar”. This claim is not supported by any evidence for he was not even allowed to enter the Mahakumbh Mela premises by the Hindu saints assembled there earlier this month.