Punjab court extends stay on cremating sect leader's body

The controversy over the last rites of sect guru Ashutosh continued with the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday continuing a stay on his cremation till the next date of hearing (August 18) while asking all parties concerned to reach an amicable solution by then.

Ashutosh, who headed the Divya Jyoti Jagriti Sansthan (DJJS) sect with its headquarters at Nurmahal near Jalandhar, was declared "clinically dead" by doctors on Jan 29 last year.

However, the sect management kept his body in a deep freezer claiming that the sect leader had gone into "samadhi" (deep meditation). No one was allowed to take the body for examination and even last rites were not performed.

Hearing a bunch of petitions, a bench of Justice S.K. Mittal and Justice Harinder Singh Sidhu verbally observed that failure to cremate the body meant showing disrespect to him.

Counsel for the state said the previous orders of the single bench did not clarified whether Ashutosh was to be buried or cremated and a clarification in this regard was required.

The high court, in his December 1 verdict last year, had directed that the body would be cremated within 15 days, and that a committee be constituted under the district magistrate to work out the last rites of the sect leader.

The Punjab police chief and chief secretary were asked by the high court to monitor the situation.

The sect has properties and assets running into hundreds of crores of rupees and there are reports that the mystery of Ashutosh's death is related to the control of these properties.