Indian court rules sect can keep 'meditating' guru's body in freezer


Ashutosh Maharaj, founder of the multi-million dollar sect, Divya Jyoti Jagriti Sansthan (Divine Light Awakening Mission), apparently died of a cardiac arrest in January 2014.


This morning the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed a petition by Dalip Kumar Jha, who says he is the guru’s son, and who wanted his father's body to cremate him as per Hindu rituals.

Mr Jha's lawyer, S P Soi, told AFP that it was unclear whether or not the court approved the sect's argument that Maharaj was alive.

"But they dismissed our petition which is disappointing and we will challenge it in the Supreme Court," said Mr Soi.

The court set aside a 2014 judgment that had ordered his cremation after doctors confirmed him clinically dead.

His disciples had challenged the court's cremation order saying he had simply drifted into a deeper form of meditation, something he did often in sub-zero Himalayan temperatures.

The guru, who was in his seventies, established the sect in Punjab's Jalandhar city in 1983 to promote "self-awakening and global peace", with millions of followers across the world and properties worth an estimated $120 million in India, the United States, South America, Australia, the Middle East and Europe.

Mr Jha claims that the guru's real name was Mahesh Kumar Jha and he left his native village in eastern Bihar state in late 1970s before founding the sect.

He and Maharaj's former driver Puran Singh filed petitions in court soon after the guru's death demanding a criminal probe and alleged the sect members were deliberately holding his body to retain control of his vast financial assets.


