Nityananda sent to jail till May 12

BANGALORE - Tainted Swami Nityananda was Friday sent to jail till May 12, after being in police custody for eight days answering questions on his alleged sex-romp and other activities.

A court in Ramanagara, about 40 km from here, remanded the 32-year-old Nityananda in judicial custody when he was presented before it Friday on the expiry of his police custody.

The Karnataka Crime Investigation Department interrogated Nityananda on video tapes showing him in bed with two women, his bank accounts and on reports that he bound several of his followers to non-disclosure agreement about his sexual acts with them.

The CID declined to divulge the information it has gathered from Nityananda alias Rajasekaran, who had an ashram (complex) on a 28-acre plot at Bidadi, about 30 km from here.

One of his devotees, Lenin Karuppanan, who also served as his driver, has claimed he had secretly filmed Nityananda in bed with two women in the Bidadi complex. Karuppanan surrendered to Tamil Nadu police after the telecast of the video tape on March 3.

Nityananda was on the run since the telecast. He was traced to Himachal Pradesh and arrested there on April 22 and brought to Bangalore the next day to stand trial in several criminal cases relating to obscenity, criminal intimidation, rape and hurting religious sentiments.