Bengaluru: Controversial self-styled godman Nithyananda, along with five other accused, appeared before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court (CJMC), Ramnagara on Wednesday. The case came up for hearing around 11.30 am and went on till around 12.45 p.m. It was adjourned to October 27.
It was the 3rd Additional Sessions Court Ramanagara that was hearing the case, but as presiding officer Manjula was on leave, the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court Ramanagara was directed to hear the case and a special public prosecutor was appointed. “As the case was called, the accused, Nithyananda, and five others filed bail petitions. As the Chief Judicial Magistrate C ourt was an in-charge court, the case was adjourned to October 27 for objections to be filed by the prosecution,” said Mr K. Gopal Rao, Senior Assistant Public Prosecutor, CJM Court.
Though Nithyananda agreed to a potency test following a Supreme Court order, the godman refused to take the very injection that was crucial to determine the potency of an individual. He claimed to the doctors in Victoria Hospital that he would suffer a cardiac arrest if he was injected with the drug.
He was also adamant in not taking the injection as it was not mentioned in the court order. The interim potency test reports and voice test results were handed over by the medical team from Victoria Hospital and the Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Madiwala to the CID officials recently.
An NRI filed a rape complaint against Nithyananda in 2012, alleging that she was repeatedly sexually assaulted over five years in Nithyananda’s ashram and was threatened with dire consequences if she revealed it to anyone.
Then Karnataka Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda in June 2012 had ordered the arrest of Nithyananda after several of his followers appeared on vernacular Kannada TV news channels and accused the godman of exploiting them sexually. Cases of rape and unnatural sex were registered against Nithyananda and five others at the Bidadi police station.
