NEW DELHI (AFP) – A top Indian cleric, revered by millions of Hindus, has confessed to the murder of a temple official, a lawyer for the southern state of Tamil Nadu told a court.
Jayendra Saraswathi, known as a “Hindu pontiff”, broke down and confessed to his involvement in the murder, the Press Trust of India quoted state prosecutor K. Tulsi as saying in the Madras High Court on Monday.
“He seems to be now realising that it was a mistake,” the lawyer said of the 71-year-old cleric who was arrested earlier this month on charges that he had hired contract killers to murder the temple official in September.
The cleric, popularly known as the Kanchi Shankaracharya, heads a 2,500-year-old temple at Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu and is the most powerful of Hinduism’s four main leaders.
He was arrested on charges of murder, criminal conspiracy and suppression of evidence over the death of the official, Sankararaman, in September.