Authorities say the only subject that cult members agree to discuss is about living conditions in the cave. They answer to all other questions by singing psalms or writing.
Sect members still staying in the cave have not signaled any date of their possible coming out.
Religious writings by doomsday cult leader Pyotr Kuzntsov have been declared illegal by a court in Russia’s Penza Region. The books were found to carry extremist ideas aimed at inciting hatred towards other religions and nationalities.
He had been hospitalized with head wounds on April 2. Although initial media reports claimed that he had been beaten by disillusioned sect members, authorities later said that his wounds were the result of a suicide attempt.
A police source later said that the ‘cave-in’ had in fact not put the sect members in any danger, saying that “nothing catastrophic has occurred – rescue workers are clearing the entrance of fallen clumps of earth.”
Members of a doomsday sect living in a cave since November in expectation of the end of the world are unlikely to emerge on Orthodox Easter, a regional official said according to news agency Interfax.
Rumours started after most of the sect’s followers left the hideout earlier this month, with one of them allegedly giving a controversial interview to the press.
The five former cave dwellers, who emerged from their underground cave in the Penza Region, central Russia, together with other members of the Orthodox Christian sect earlier this month, have also been ordered to pay a fine, Lyudmila Levina said.
Despite one member of the sect claiming that the group is an offshoot of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the sect has generally been considered part of a wave of extreme Russian Orthodoxy in Russia and some former Soviet republics
The leader of the Doomsday cult, Pyotr Kuznetsov has regained consciousness a little over a week after an alleged suicide attempt.