The Novosibirsk Central District Court has upheld the prosecution’s request to extend custody for leader of the Ashram Shambala religious sect Konstantin Rudnev.

Arrested in early October, Rudnev was charged with creating a religious organization encroaching upon citizens’ rights, rape and sexual abuse.

The leader of a notorious quasi-religious cult, suspected of recruiting thousands of people and turning them into voluntary sex slaves, has been arrested in Russia.

Konstantin Rudnev, leader of the “Ashram Shambala” sect has been put in custody in the Western Siberian city of Novosibirsk and charged with sexual assault, rape and the creation of a society involved in violence and the violation of human rights, police said.

Police have detained the leader of Ashram Shambala, one of Russia‘s largest sects, near the West Siberian city of Novosibirsk, a deputy police chief said on Tuesday.

He was put on the federal wanted list in the 1990s after it was determined that the sect’s ideology was “anti-social and anti-family, deliberately opposing itself to society in general.” The police operation was aimed at freeing several sect members, including an underage girl from Belarus.

Novosibirsk, 24 September: Konstantin Rudnev, the founder of the Ashram Shamballa organization of a religious orientation [untraced, although both elements of the name are encountered in relation to Asian religions], has been detained in Novosibirsk Region, the press service of the Russian Interior Ministry's main administration for the Siberian Federal District told RIA Novosti on Friday [24 September].