Jayendra Saraswathi and Vijayendra Saraswathi: cleared of murder.

Agencies/Puducherry

A court yesterday acquitted popular Hindu seer Jayendra Saraswathi and his junior of murdering a temple manager nine years ago in a case that stirred outrage among their millions of devotees.

Sessions Judge C S Murugan told the packed court in the southern city of Puducherry that witnesses failed to support the case against the 78-year-old religious leader.

The 2004 arrest of Jayendra Saraswathi, considered one of India’s most revered Hindu leaders, at a monastery and seminary in Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu created huge anger among his followers who staged protests and fasts.

Saraswathi and his junior seer, Vijayendra Saraswathi, 44, had been accused of employing hitmen to kill manager A Sankararaman, who had earlier made claims of financial mismanagement against them.

Both seers were cleared of murder, while the court also acquitted 21 others charged in connection with the killing.

The 52-year-old manager, who had also previously worked as an accountant for the seer, was found dead from multiple stab wounds after being attacked in the temple that he managed.

Jayendra Saraswathi is head of the 2,500-year-old hugely wealthy Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt, the leading seat of Hinduism.

His followers consider him a divine incarnation.

The prosecution had accused him of carrying out a “heinous, calculated, well-designed and gruesome murder through rowdy elements on payment of money.”

But defence lawyers said Jayendra Saraswathi, known as “the seer of Kanchi,” had been framed.

Reacting to the acquittals, Sankararaman’s son Anand Sharma expressed shock and said he found the ruling “unbelievable.”

“My father did not commit suicide. If everyone is let off, then who killed my father?” he asked.

He said the family would go through the judgment and decide the future course of action.

The Tamil Nadu police arrested Jayendra Saraswathi in Andhra Pradesh on Diwali day in 2004. He was in jail for two months.

He got bail from the Supreme Court on January 10, 2005 and on the same day his junior Vijayendra Saraswathi was arrested. He was let out on bail a month later by the Madras High Court.

The trial was shifted to Puducherry from a court near Chennai on a petition from Jayendra Saraswathi after he complained that the atmosphere in Tamil Nadu was not right for a free and fair trial.

The Supreme Court approved the request in 2005.

The top court also asked the Puducherry government to appoint its own public prosecutor  - also following a petition from Jayendra Saraswathi.

During the trial nearly half of the 189 witnesses turned hostile, refusing to testify for the prosecution, while one of the accused was killed earlier this year.

The two seers left the court soon after the judgment was delivered.

Welcoming the verdict, Ambur Jai Shankar, president of the Vijaya Bharatham Makkal Katchi, said: “Justice has won. Hindus all over the world will be happy now.”

He said police can re-investigate the case to find the real culprit.

Arjun Sampath of the Hindu Makkal Katchi said: “Dharma may seem to lose initially to conspiracy but in the end dharma will triumph.”

Several people assembled in the court shouted slogans in support of the seers.