Chandraswami Arrested

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) yesterday arrested controversial godman Chandraswami and his associate Kailash Nath Aggarwal after the Supreme Court cancelled his anticipatory bail on Wednesday.

Chandraswami was arrested by a team of CBI officials from a south Delhi medical centre while his associate surrendered at the CBI headquarters in the evening. Chandraswami was later taken to the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital for a medical check-up.

The Supreme Court had on Wedensday cancelled the anticipatory bail granted by the Delhi High Court to Chandraswami, Aggarwal and their associate Vikram Singh, all trustees of the Vishwa Dharmayatan Trust (VDT), after they failed to provide CBI the original documents for receipt of over Rs two crore as foreign contributions for the trust.

According to CBI sources, the trust recieved over Rs 2.28 crore in foreign contribution between 1992 and 1995 but when the CBI questioned them regarding the source of the funds, the three failed to give convincing answers According to the CBI probe, these contributions were allegedly received from an influential international arms dealers and and some others.

One interesting thing about the donations that had been received was that they were mostly routed through tax haven, investigations have revealed.

The addresses of these donors were mostly in very small nations, widely known as tax havens, the investigating agency told the court.