Osho followers in Pune deny UK woman’s rape charges: ‘baseless and have no truth whatsoever’

In an interview with a UK-based newspaper, the woman alleged she was forced to engage in sexual activities from the age of seven at Osho ashrams.

In an interview with The Times, the UK-based newspaper, the 54-year-old woman has alleged she was forced to engage in sexual activities from the age of seven after her mother was drawn to the cult. (File Photo)

After a British woman alleged she was raped over 50 times in Osho ashrams across the world in the 1970s, the controversial guru’s close associates denied the charges on Tuesday and said children were not allowed inside the ashram located in upscale Koregaon Park area of Pune city.

In an interview with The Times, the UK-based newspaper, the 54-year-old woman has alleged she was forced to engage in sexual activities from the age of seven after her mother was drawn to the cult. The woman also alleged that between the age of 7 and 11, she and her friends were coerced into performing sexual acts on adult men living in the ashram before these escalated to rape.

A documentary, Children of the Cult, made by Maroesja Perizonius is also based on the woman’s allegations against the Osho ashrams.

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“If these allegations also pertain to the ashram in Pune of the 70s, then they seem to have been made with an intention to make money…They are baseless and have no truth whatsoever so far as Pune’s Osho ashram of the 70s is concerned…This is because children were never allowed inside the ashram except for once during lunch break,” Swami Chaitanya Keerti, a close associate of Osho who joined the ashram in 1974 and was with him for at least 15 years, told The Indian Express.

Swami Chaitanya Keerti — who has been ousted from Osho International Meditation Resort, a new name given to the Osho ashram, and now heads the ‘Rebel Sannyansins’ group — also served as the editor of Osho Times.

Ma Amrit Sadhana, spokesperson for Osho International Meditation Resort, said, “The 21 members who run the Resort have collectively decided not to respond to the allegations as the Resort has nothing to do with them”.

Keerti said children were not allowed to stay at the Pune ashram so the question of their sexual exploitation cannot arise. “Only parents could come inside the ashram and participate in the meditation and commune activities whole day, and children could come during lunch hour only,” he added.

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Keerti said he does not recall seeing the woman, then a seven-year-old or her mother. “There used to be 2,000-3000 sannyasins at any given point of time,” he said.

“Some groups of Christian fundamentalists have become very active again to malign Osho’s name, making movies, writing books, and using paid media for their sinister conspiracies against Osho. Such people have a history of funding the media projects against Osho,” said Keerti.

“After the Wild Wild Country on Netflix, there was a vacuum of six years to spread negativity against Osho. And now this vacuum will be filled by the Children of the Cult documentary, the salacious fiction based on the life of the UK girl. She would earn a huge amount of money and fame with this project,” he alleged.

“The woman knows that sex stories have enormous potential to reach all corners of the earth, and Osho’s name with it and huge success is yours for sure. In the sex-starved world, fabricated sex stories sell with speed. What a world of perverts people keep living today! And the modern media plays an important role in serving this world,” he added.

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Others associated with the Osho ashram have also denied the allegations, calling them fake.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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