Swamiji, an expert in meditation and yoga techniques, teaches stress management techniques to the army personals. Suspecting that he was attacked by a group of eight militants from Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), the District Superintendent of police Vishwas Nangare Patil with other senior officers and a staff of about 75 policemen equipped with the AK 47 rifles laid a trap at the spot.

However, the story took a completely different turn when the police nabbed the suspects.

Those arrested were identified as B Vyenkatraju M S Bhaskaram (42), a senior auditor at Central government’s scientific audit department in Chennai, Vyenkat D. Muttuswami (39), an auditor in the same department, V S Laxman (36), clerk in the same department, N Karunanidhi Natrajan (38), an unemployed, K Shrinivasan M Kannan (44) and Kupendram Ganeshan (34), both autorickshaw drivers and Surendran Kapuswami (37), a real estate agent. The eighth accomplice Harihar Subramaniam was reported to be absconding with the passports and PAN cards of swamiji and disciples.

The suspects claimed that they came to swamiji’s ashram to acquire Rs 50 lakh, which he had taken as loan from them in 2000.

According to the police, at around 1 pm on December 30, a group of eight persons knocked at the door of swamiji’s ashram. When a disciple Kartikeyan Ramanathan Iyer opened the door, the group smashed him and two other disciples. They subsequently manhandled swamiji and demanded Rs 1.5 crores from him.

The group closed all entry, exit points of the ashram and confined swamiji and his disciples at the ashram. They grabbed cash of Rs 36,000 from swamiji and his disciples. They also forced swamiji to sign a cash withdrawal slip of IDBI bank of Rs 4 lakhs.

Meanwhile, Swamiji’s devotees started coming to the ashram for greeting him for New Year. The attackers sent the devotees back saying that swamiji has gone out of station.

One of the disciples, Kartikeyan, wrote a note about the situation and somehow managed to pass this letter to the visiting devotees, who later informed the police on Tuesday morning and also faxed the same letter to the central home ministry.

“We came to know that swamiji is operating a vedic and scientific research trust and has been teaching stress management techniques to army personnel at Leh, Kargil and also at establishments like Defence Research and Development Organisations,” said Nangre Patil while speaking to the media on Wednesday.

“Initially we thought that it was an LTTE attack. Taking no chances, we had prepared ourselves for the fight. One team was sent to the ashram, while another went to the IDBI bank on Talegaon — Chakan Road, where the suspects had gone for withdrawing the money. But the case turned to be entirely different after the suspects were nabbed,” Patil said.

Kartikeyan lodged a complaint with the Talegaon Dabhade police station. He said that swamiji was earlier residing at an ashram in Chennai, when had taken about Rs 25,000 from one of the suspects for development works. But, the money was returned back.

Kartikeyan mentioned even if the suspects had some doubts about the financial deals, they should have discussed it in a right way. “The group did a lot of hooliganism at the ashram. They saw blue films and enjoyed liquor”, he said.

Meanwhile, a suspect Surendran Kapuswami claimed that swamiji was big cheater. “Swamiji was in Chennai for about 15 years when he collected Rs 52 lakh from 24 devotees including me in 2000. He gave a cheque of Rs five crores, which bounced. A bank in Chennai had also registered a fraud case against him. So he ran away from Chennai and settled in Pune”, Surendran said.