Convict-turned-swami tortures British wife, held

Accused got Amanda to marry him, saying they were consorts in their last birth

MALAPPURAM, APRIL 18: An army deserter and murderer-turned-holy man, who conned the 23-year-old daughter of a British shipbroker into marrying him and tortured her for a year at his ashram, was arrested today at Kottakkal near here, police said.

The woman, Amanda Williams, and her father A.R. Williams are of Indian origin. Williams’s great-great-grandfather, who belonged to Kolkata, had migrated to the Carribbean Islands looking for work. There, the family set up and ran a shipbroking business before Williams’s father migrated to London. ‘‘They had a complicated civil litigation going on in the Carribbeans with a fortune at stake. A London-based Keralite NRI got the Williams in touch with the holy man in Kottakkal, who offered to solve their problem. Many phone calls, webcam chats and emails later, they landed up in Kottakkal,’’ says Rajeev Lakshmanan, Amanda’s lawyer here. Lakshmanan says neither Williams nor his daughter knew then that the 45-year-old Swami Gnana Chaitanya of the Shiva Shringam Ashram was a former convict whose real name was P.M. Sudhakaran.

‘‘He was an Armyman who shot at and injured a senior officer in a camp in Bangalore and then escaped with his sten gun. To escape the police, Sudhakaran tried to hijack a car and shot dead its owner and his two friends when they resisted. He ended up spending 13 years and nine months in jail for that before he was released in 1992,’’ the lawyer added.

Sudhakaran, married with six children who lived with him in the ashram along with his wife, performed many rituals to ward off evil and gained the father and daughter’s confidence. ‘‘By then, Amanda had been taken in by Sudhakaran. They used to chat on the Internet for long after she went back to England,’’ Lakshmanan said.

Soon, the Williams were back at Kottakkal for a ‘‘special puja’’. Sudhakaran convinced the father and daughter that Amanda used to be his ‘‘consort’’ in their last birth and must therefore marry him or face Lord Shiva’s wrath. He married Amanda on April 15 last year. ‘‘For good measure, he got Amanda’s father to give him about Rs 15 lakh in cash, and buy him a Tata Safari and an expensive motorbike,’’ Lakshmanan added.

‘‘He got Williams to arrange for the papers to help him relocate to London. Williams told me he had used all his resources there and even managed to represent personally to Prime Minister Tony Blair for his son-in-law after the application was rejected. It was only then that Williams came to know about Sudhakaran’s criminal record,’’ he said.

By then, Amanda started complaining about the tortures and sexual abuses she had to face in the ashram.

‘‘She wrote a long email to her father when Sudhakaran was away in Mumbai, detailing the tortures and sexual perversions that the Swami forced on her. Her father forwarded the email to me. I got in touch with the Arya Samaj in Kozhikode immediately,’’ said Lakshmanan.

The district Arya Samaj office confirmed that Lakshmanan had approached them. ‘‘The lawyer came to us and we thought this was a big disgrace needing our intervention. We sent a group of our members to the ashram and brought her back to Kozhikode,’’ it said.

After his return from Mumbai, Sudhakaran lodged a ‘missing wife’ complaint with the police. The Arya Samaj then rushed Amanda to her lawyer’s office. Sudhakaran reached there a with police team to take her back, but Amanda said she feared for her life. The police took her to a court in Manjeri where Amanda gave a sworn statement. The court then ordered she be allowed to be with her lawyer till her father came to take her back to London.

Williams reached Malappuram two days ago and took away his daughter yesterday. Sudhakaran was arrested today. Malappuram SP, K.G. James said Sudhakaran has been charged under Sections 420 and 498 of the IPC for torture and cheating. He will be produced in court tomorrow.

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