Source

KANCHI, TAMIL NADU, INDIA, November 15, 2004: The police today interrogated top functionaries of the Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt and their staff in connection with a murder case involving the Kanchi Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati. Those questioned include Neelakanta Iyer (administrative head of the Mutt), N Sundareshan Iyer (Mutt manager), Viswanathan (manager of the Kamakshi temple), Ramu (the Mutt’s official photographer), a typist, a clerk and a cashier employed by the Mutt. Police sources said the interrogation would continue tonight. The police are now working on the theory that the murder of temple manager Sankararaman was not the first time that hired killers had allegedly been used to silence opponents or meddlers in Mutt affairs. Police sources said today that they have picked up two Chennai-based men, Bhoominathan and Lakshmanan, who they said belonged to a gang of criminals operating out of Chennai. Sources said the two were among the bunch that grievously assaulted Radhakrishnan, a former Mutt employee, and his wife, in Chennai in September 2002. Radhakrishnan, who was earlier sacked from the Mutt after he fell out with its authorities, was hacked and stabbed at his Chennai home. His wife, who came in the way, was also set upon. Both, however, survived. The investigation into that case had reached nowhere until the police apparently decided to have a go at it after the Shankaracharya’s arrest. The special police team investigating the seer’s case was today asked to take over this one as well.



“We now have evidence that the same gang led by Kuppuswami, a Chennai-based don, which was hired to eliminate Sankararaman, had been used in this attack as well,” a top police source said. Police said Kuppuswami has since vanished, but claimed to have “substantive proof” of his links with the Mutt. Police teams that searched the homes of Pashupati, president of the Mutt-run NGO, Jan Kalyan, and Ramu, the Mutt’s official photographer, yesterday had taken away a bunch of photographs of the Kanchi Shankaracharya with various people. Police sources added that they were also looking closely at a third similar attack, for possible links to these two. The victim in this case was Madhavan, a temple priest. He was assaulted in similar fashion, in rather similar circumstances.



Tempers ran high in the Mutt premises today, besieged by the media corps and curious locals. Mutt functionaries led by A Shanmugham, the Mutt’s lawyer, took on the police in a slanging match in front of TV cameras, protesting the frisking of those going in or out of the Mutt. “This is clearly an interference in our right to worship. We are going to take this up in the court tomorrow,” Shanmugham said. The lawyer claimed that the police had not passed on a copy of the petition that they filed at the Judicial Magistrate’s court yesterday, seeking police custody of the Shankaracharya. “They don’t have a fig leaf of evidence to cover their charges. This is a big frame-up” he claimed. The Kancheepuram court will hear the petition tomorrow.

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