IIT-M girl rescued from fake 'guru'

CHENNAI: The Uttaranchal police and parents of Vedantam L Prathyusha, who went missing from the IIT-M campus in mysterious circumstances on January 17, rescued the postgraduate student from an ashram belonging to a self-styled guru Shiva Gupta near Dehradun last week.

The girl's father Purushothaman on Monday informed the Kotturpuram police that his daughter was now with the family and asked them to close the case they had lodged when she vanished.

Prathyusha, 26, had left behind letters in her hostel room that said she was leaving for the Himalayas in search of spirituality.

The Kotturpuram police said Purushothaman informed them that there were many other girls, some in their teens, and women in Gupta's ashram. The Uttaranchal police have not initiated any action against Gupta because they did not receive any complaint against him, an investigating officer said. The other women and girls also appeared to be in the ashram of their own volition.

Purushothaman told this correspondent that his daughter is safe now at their house in Brodipet in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh.

The city police, TOI reported on January 23, found that Prathyusha had boarded a train to Mumbai with a man from Coimbatore named Baskar. Gupta. Her cellphone records showed that she spoke to Gupta five times on the day she went missing.

"Prathyusha's family members and the Uttaranchal police went in search of her from door to door in the place near Dehradun where her phone records placed her," a police officer said. "They finally found her in Gupta's ashram."

The officer said Gupta appeared to have brainwashed Prathyusha, who initially refused to go home with her parents.

"Gupta indoctrinated Prathyusha and promised to show her the path to divinity," he said. "She went to his ashram with Gupta's friend Baskar from Coimbatore."

Students in Sabarmati Hostel on the IIT-M campus on January 17 told warden Shanti Bhattacharya that Prathyusha was missing. When they opened her hostel room, there were two letters - a two-page note in English and a three-page note in Telugu -stating that she was going to attain sainthood.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/IIT-M-girl-rescued-from-fake-guru/articleshow/51003078.cms

They should first investigate Gupta and determine if he is a fake guru. Until then, he is not guilty. I wonder if the girl has some mental issues. The parents should determine that before deciding that she has been foolish to move away from school.