8 months ago
3
NEW DELHI
Swami Chaitanyananda Saraswati, manager of the Vasant Kunj-based Sri Sharada Institute of Indian Management-Research, who has been booked connected charges of sexually harassing 17 students, is facing a increasing database of charges, including fraud and forgery, widening the scope of the lawsuit against the absconding accused.
A constabulary serviceman said connected Thursday that the 62-year-old accused, who has been connected the tally for the past 2 months, was past traced to Mumbai, wherever helium is travelling successful disguise and readying to fly abroad.
According to the officer, Mr. Saraswati allegedly sublet properties of the Sri Sharada Peetham (Sringeri Math) successful Karnataka to backstage firms for nett and diverted funds to bargain luxury cars. Two specified vehicles, 1 with a forged diplomatic fig sheet and different purchased successful March, person been traced to him.
The FIR notes that aft acquiring 1 of the luxury vehicles, helium performed puja with pistillate students, drove them astir portion making lewd remarks, and past took them connected a travel to Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, connected the pretext of an “industrial visit”.
The charges widen beyond fiscal misconduct. The FIR accessed by The Hindu reveals that the accused installed aggregate CCTV cameras wrong the women’s hostel citing “security” reasons.
‘Red flags’
Several complainants besides alleged that Mr. Saraswati summoned them to his bureau and backstage country astatine unusual hours.
“CCTV footage obtained from the institute showing the lobby and washroom areas has raised reddish flags...,” the constabulary serviceman said, adding that the accused had afloat entree to the institute’s CCTV strategy done his mobile phone.
Sources said the accused converted his ground-floor bureau into a “torture chamber”, wherever women scholars, peculiarly from economically weaker sections, were subjected to exploitation.
Mr. Saraswati has already been booked nether Sections 75(2) (sexual harassment), 79 (word, gesture, oregon enactment intended to insult the modesty of a woman), and 351(2) (criminal intimidation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita based connected a ailment lodged astatine the Vasant Kunj (North) constabulary presumption connected August 4.
‘Swift action’
Meanwhile, the backstage institute issued a four-page connection connected Thursday, stressing that it has acted “swiftly and decisively” to support students. It besides acknowledged allegations of fiscal irregularities and “arbitrary behaviour” against Mr. Saraswati, formerly known arsenic Swami (Dr.) Parthasarathy.
According to the statement, the governing Peetham had already ordered an autarkic audit that flagged “fraud, forgery, cheating, and transgression breach of trust” linked to the manager and his associates.
The accused’s powerfulness of lawyer has been revoked and a caller 11-member governing council, comprising educationists and professionals of “impeccable integrity”, has been appointed to oversee the institute, it added.
