Political patronage helped Sansthan's expansion

Ministers wife runs bodys finances

From a small indistinct office in Ponda just three years ago, its ashram in Ramnathi, which is in the religious and cultural heart of Hindu Goa, has blossomed into its national headquarters. This has not come without open political patronage. Goa’s Transport Minister Ramkrishna Dhavlikar says unabashedly that his entire family is involved with the Sanathan’s activities and the good work it has been doing in spreading the ‘dharma prasad’.

Dhavlikar told Deccan Herald at his home in Bandora, located  near the ashram, that his wife runs the accounts of the Sansthan and every member of his family is involved with the ashram in one way or other. Only he and his brother Deepak, also an MGP MLA, are not directly linked, he said.

He wants proof to the Sanathan’s links to Friday’s blast in Margao before action being taken against them. “I don’t see any reason why my wife and other members of the family should stay away from the Sansthan, unless the police have sufficient evidence,” he says.

He doesn’t see any reason to resign from the government to let investigations go on unhindered. “I am not interfering, neither have I called to police to find out the course of investigations,” he says. Dhavlikar claims he is in no way involved in financing Sanathan’s activities. The police searched the ashram on Saturday and questioned its administrators on Dhavlikars wife’s links to the organisation’s finances. Police said they had found incriminating material at the ashram like an electrical circuit and timers.

Two room-mates of Malgonda Patil the suspected perpetrator who died in the blast, were taken in for questioning. There were 176 people in the ashram, including three French nationals who were staying there without informing the police, the police said.
A spokesman for the ashram said the Sanathan’s activists had been victims of a bomb planted by someone else.