Gujarat police probe why Swami Gunatit’s suicide was ‘passed off as natural death’

As the death triggered a new controversy against the backdrop of the Gujarat High Court case between two groups of the sect—one led by Prabodh Swami and the other by Prem Swaroop Swami—superintendent of police Rohan Anand addressed the media on Saturday.

Anand said the temple trust had failed to inform the police about the alleged suicide and was preparing to perform the seer’s final rites on Thursday morning when police teams arrived at the temple.

“The police received information on the morning of April 28 (Thursday) that a seer from the Haridham Sokhda ashram has passed away. Soon after that, we got many requests to probe the death and they raised the suspicion that it was not a natural death… When a police team reached there, they were already preparing to perform the final rites as they would in a natural death. However, because a suspicion had been raised about the death of this saint, who was aged about 65-70 years, we decided to send the body for an autopsy”

The primary postmortem report, Anand said, left the police surprised. “The report has confirmed that the death occurred late in the evening of April 27. When this point came to light, the police team automatically began probing into the incident further to see why the hanging was not reported to the police on the previous evening itself. We immediately began our investigation and took a forensic team to the Sokhda premises. The team visited the room where the seer lived and gathered evidence that confirmed that he had indeed died by hanging,” Anand said, adding that the police were waiting for the detailed forensic and viscera analysis to ascertain the cause of death.

The police began recording statements of priests living in the ashram as well as seers who recently vacated the premises following a high court directive after the Prabodh Swami group alleged in a petition on April 21 that hundreds of its supporters had allegedly been held hostage on the premises by the Prem Swaroop Swami group.

Gunatit Swami’s family members will also have their statements recorded, according to the police, as the Sokhda trust said it had “consulted” the family before concealing the alleged suicide.

“We have questioned some of the seers who were living with Gunatit Swami. The seer’s body was discovered at 7.30pm on Wednesday, but the priests of Sokhda Swaminarayan were in a dilemma about whether they should make the incident public,” Anand said.

According to the officer, the seers said they had decided not to make public the seer’s death or report it to the police but chose to proceed with the funeral rites after discussing the matter with his family.

“It is a matter of investigation now to ascertain what was their intention behind trying to conceal the incident. We are also probing the actual sequence of events from Wednesday evening to the time the death was made public,” the superintendent of police told reporters.

The police have registered a case of accidental death.

Advocate Chitrajeet Upadhyaya, representing the Prabodh Swami group in the high court litigation, had cited “an atmosphere of threat” during a hearing. The court has advised the two warring groups to choose a retired judge to mediate between them.

Hundreds of seers belonging to the Prabodh Swami group decided to leave the Sokhda premises after a high court directive to shift the male seers and devotees to trust premises in Bakrol, near Anand, and the female devotees and seers to Ahmedabad’s Nirnaynagar Sant Niwas.

The court also directed Prem Swaroop, JM Dave and Tyagvallabh Swami not to visit the two premises or contact the seers and devotees evacuated from Sokhda.

The tussle for control over the ashram began after the demise of Hariprasad Swami in July 2021, when speculations about his successor gained momentum. The leaders of both camps were close aides of Hariprasad but their followers have been at loggerheads with one another for several months, with clashes reported from the ashram.