File Details of Criminal Cases Against Isha Foundation, HC Tells Govt
Chennai:The Madras High Court has directed the Tamil Nadu government to file a status report on the details of criminal cases registered against the Isha Foundation. The court asked why Jaggi Vasudev alias Sadhguru, who had got his daughter married, was encouraging other young women to tonsure their heads, renounce worldly life and live like hermitess at his yoga centres.
The direction was given on Monday by a division bench comprising Justice S.M. Subramaniam and Justice V. Sivagnanam during the hearing of a habeas corpus petition filed by a retired professor of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore. Petitioner S. Kamaraj (69) complained that his two daughters were held captive in the Isha Foundation.
The petitioner said the daughters, aged 42 and 39 years, who were well-educated, had been brainwashed to reside at the Isha Yoga Centre. However, both the alleged detainees appeared before the division bench on Monday and said they were residing at the Yoga Centre on their own volition and no one had detained them against their will.
The judges decided to investigate further after having an interaction with both the daughters.
The judges said the court was exercising its jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution and that it was necessary to get to the bottom of the case. The court said it wanted to know why a person who had given his daughter in marriage and made her settle well in life was encouraging the daughters of others to tonsure their heads and live the life of a hermitess.
Advocate K. Rajendra Kumar, who appeared for Isha Foundation, argued that an adult was free to choose her path in life and that he could not really understand the court’s doubt. Justice Subramaniam, who intervened, said, “You will not understand because you are appearing for a particular party. But this court is neither for or against anybody. We only want to do justice to the litigants before us.”
When the two daughters sought the court’s permission to make their submissions, the judge asked if they did not think that neglecting their parents was a sin. “Love all and hate none is the principle of devotion but we could see so much of hatred in you for your parents. You are not even addressing them respectfully,” the judge observed.
Senior counsel M. Purushothaman, who appeared for petitioner Kamaraj, said there were multiple criminal cases involving Isha Foundation and that even recently, a doctor serving there was booked under the Pocso Act. The court ordered additional public prosecutor E. Raj Thilak to submit a status report by October, listing the cases related to Isha Foundation.
In the affidavit, the petitioner said his elder daughter had obtained her engineering degree in mechatronics in 2003 and completed her MTech degree from a popular university in the United Kingdom. She was employed in the same university and was drawing around Rs. 1 lakh per month in 2004. She was married to a man in the United States but they were divorced in 2008.
After that she began attending yoga classes at the Isha Foundation and her younger sister, who is a software engineer, followed her. The man said life had become hell for him and his 63-year-old wife since their daughters abandoned them. He alleged that the daughters had lost their cognitive faculties due to some kind of food and medicine administered to them at the yoga centre.
