(Ex-head of
the SS Super Speciality Hospital Blood Transfusion
Unit)
As one could predict, persons given
much open attention and are accorded many of Baba's various kinds
of blessing, including VIP status in the Sai movement. If and when
they should change their tune, or otherwise displease Baba, as
happened in the case of the author and very popular
Baba-eulogising 'lecturer' at the ashram, Dr. Bhatia who led the
SSB Hospital Blood Transfusion Unit, they are cast into the
figurative 'outer darkness' and are even threatened by Sai Baba
personally. Such was the case of Dr. Naresh Bhatia, the head of
the SB hospital Blood Donation Unit and a close favourite of SB.
When my wife and I were at PN in 1998, Dr. Bhatia was still one of
SB's favourites, as was also David Bailey. Bhatia had written a
gushing book about the marvelous way SB had looked after him and
his life up until then, and he was a darling of those gaping
Westerners who followed his 'lectures', held under the auspices of
the ashram with SB's blessing.
Dr. Bhatia's own revelations to the
press revealed secrets and alleged facts about Baba as a major
sexual abuser of minors. He was excommunicated and - by an unusual
expedient for the ashram, which eschews any whiff of publicity
about inner intrigue, this was made definite (without revealing
anything about why or what he had done or said) by an official
notice in Baba's official journal, Sanathana Sarathi. Rumours were
spread among residents at the ashram that Dr. Bhatia had seduced
female assistants at the SS Hospital, which also soon reached the
author of this factual summary from friends at the ashram. The
rumours remain wholly unsubstantiated.
Dr. Bhatia, who for six years was
the head of the blood bank of the Sai Super Speciality hospital,
is quoted in The Findings, by the UK exposé writer, David
Bailey:
"Three young students from Sai
Baba's junior male college were called for interview. One of them,
a seven year old boy student, came out of the interview room
crying. He continued to cry for two days, and was unable to eat or
study.
That evening Dr Bhatia, on duty in
the children's canteen, was asked to find the cause of the child's
distress. He questioned and then examined the child, and found
that he had been sexually penetrated, via his anus. The child was
taken to Bangalore and re-examined. A second medical opinion
confirmed sexual abuse.
Dr Bhatia had been involved in
sexual activity with Sai Baba for six years, believing that he was
serving divinity. He went to Sai Baba: "Why do you do this to such
a young child when you have all of us adults and the older
students to play with?"
Sai Baba's reply: "Don't bargain
with God!
Soon after, five men went to Dr
Bhatia's home, threatening his life with knives. He made his
escape by car, fleeing to Delhi."
According to the journalist Mick
Brown of the Sunday Telegraph (12 November 2000), Bhatia resigned
from his post at the hospital in December 1999 and is now an
administrator at a hospital in New Delhi. Mick Brown
stated:
"Contacted by phone, Bhatia said
that he had become a devotee of Sai Baba in 1971, at the age of
20, and that he had sexual relations with Sai Baba for "15 or 16
years". In that time, he said, he was also aware that Sai Baba had
relations with "many, many" students from the college and school,
and with devotees from overseas."
The Sunday Telegraph article gained
much prominence and was soon republished around the world in a
number of prominent dailies in other languages, Dr. Bhatia fell
mysteriously silent! He has not been willing to stand forth and
repeat his allegations since shortly thereafter. This case
illustrates the reach of SB's power, since Bhatia will not repeat
any of the massive allegations he came out with when he had been
expelled from all Sai connections. He describes how his life was
threatened at Puttaparti by thugs, and left for Delhi, where he
took employment as a doctor. He declares that he still recognizes
Sai Baba as God, the major avatar of the present aeon.
It seems most likely to any
sensible, neutral observer that the likelihood is that the
powerful SB forces in India have been directed towards him and
have "got to him", so that he has accepted come kind of deal or
compromise. When one considers the various possibilities that the
Central Trust and ashram had at their disposal to silence him, it
is evident that a killing would be more likely to raise world
suspicion than some other expedient. Though execution was carried
out against four young men in 1993, their complaints had not
become publicly known and they were not in the eye of the public
or world media.
Since the above was written, it is
reported that Dr. Bhatia was later nearly killed by a truck in
Delhi and had to fight for his life in hospital for months. One
cannot but hold the suspicion that this was no
'accident'.
Note: it has since been asserted
that the 7-year old boy was several years older, and the boy was
instead in the 7th grade at school.
Robert Priddy, (Pistoia, Tuscany.
June 2002)
Times Report on Sai
Baba:
Britain may issue
official warning against the godman
An exclusive report in The Times is
causing new trouble for Sai Baba. It investigates the cases of
three Britons, who suicided after getting involved with the Indian
godman.
Michael Pender, 23, student, set
his hope in Sai Baba's claimed capacity to heal him by magic: he
was HIV infected. He lived for some time in the Puttaparthi
ashram. Short before his death, he told friends that he had been
repeatedly sexually assaulted by the godman. He was in a state of
deep depression after these events and had earlier tried to commit
suicide in the ashram. On 12 January 1999, he was found dead in a
hostel for homeless in Highbury, London. Blood tests indicated
consumption of alcohol and painkillers.
Aran Edwards, 37, classical
guitarist and postgraduate theology student at the University of
Wales in Newport, joined Sai Baba's Bristol group and started
writing numerous letters to the guru. On 19 April 1999, he hanged
himself from the staircase in his home in Cardiff.
Andrew Richardson, 33, South Africa
born British national, made a pilgrimage to Sai Baba's ashram,
booking in for a week, but mysteriously leaving after only two
days. On September 19, 1996, he traveled to Bangalore and jumped
from the eighth floor of the highest building, the State Bank of
Mysore.
All this may not be enough to book
Sai Baba for inciting suicide. There have been other suicides and
suspicious deaths earlier, which did not cause any official
reaction. Even when in June 1993 four of his close devotees
(allegedly trying to assassinate him) were mysteriously shot dead
in his bedroom and rumors of sexual abuse were palpable, he was
not even questioned by police. More than judicial consequences,
Sai Baba may face a further serious blow against his reputation by
the new revelations.
Reacting to the Times report, the
British Foreign Office has started to study Sai Baba's activities
and considers issuing an unprecedented official warning against
the guru, sources say. Sai Baba's critics in Britain urge their
government to follow the French example. In June 2001, France has
passed a new law to protect its citizens from dangerous cults like
Sai Baba's. This law makes any physical, mental or monetary
exploitation of people in vulnerable situations a criminal
offence.
Sai Baba's holy façade
started crumbling, when the spell of his miraculous capacities was
broken. This was the work of Indian Rationalists. As a result of
decades of investigating, exposing and campaigning, the miracle
man stands exposed as a trickster.
"…The Indian Rationalist
Association, an organisation of atheists and doubters which seek
to debunk organized religion and disprove all miracles …
denounce him as the biggest fraud of the `god-industry'", says the
Times report. As an example for the simple tricks behind the
Baba's "miracles", it describes the meantime famous Doordarshan
episode, which - as part of the documentary Guru Busters - has
been telecast around the world. (Guru Busters is a documentary on
the work of Indian Rationalists made by Channel IV of Britain in
1995. See also the article No more holy ash - Rationalists'
campaigns exposing Sai Baba show results in Bulletin # 8, 27 March
1999).
Mounting allegations of sexual
abuse of devotees are slowly catching up with Sai Baba. After his
former American follower Tal Broke published the Avatar of Night
as long ago as in 1976, a growing list of victims have come out
publicly, opening the flood gates of cases. They include both,
Indians and foreigners, but all of them are living abroad. So far
no case has been registered against Sai Baba in India. It is still
not very easy to accuse or arrest a man, who counts several former
presidents and prime ministers among his devotees and commands an
army of top bureaucrats, businessmen and media
persons.
In September 2000, the controversy
surrounding Sai Baba took a new turn: several cases of sexual
abuse of minor children of devotees became public and threatened
to end his divine career behind bars (see the article Now it is
Sai Baba's turn! By Sanal Edamaruku in Bulletin # 53, 29 September
2000). But once again Sai Baba managed to keep his head above
water.
Saibaba's short affair with the UN,
which had promised to uplift his international credentials
enormously, ended with a bang. The UNESCO, the educational and
cultural agency of the UN, showing a grotesque lack of
reasonable criteria and balanced judgement in selecting partners,
announced to co-sponsor a conference on "Strengthening Values
Education" at Sai Baba's headquarters at Puttaparthi last year,
but was quick to quit the co-operation, when the scandal of sexual
child abuse broke in September. It remains a remarkable mockery to
elevate a notorious trickster and spiritual fraud as a kind of
UNESCO advisor and specialist for educational values, even if the
additional aspect of child abuse was not involved. The UNESCO had
a narrow escape, but the damage was already done.
Sai Baba's "Human Values Education"
program has become something like an international hit and has
been exported into hundred countries. On the base of this program,
promoted by two Sai Baba charities, schools are run all around the
world. In Britain alone, Baba's "human values" are currently
adopted as part of the national curriculum and taught in 500
schools. Now authorities are suddenly concerned about the guru's
"infiltration" of the British school system. In Sweden, Sai Baba
schools have started closing down.
