Inquiry over death of inmates in orphanage

Chennai, Feb 3 (UNI) Revenue and police officials has conducted a detailed inquiry over the mysterious death of 10 inmates in Sri Ramakrishna Athmalayam, an orphanage run by Swamy Amuthananda Thava Yogi, at suburb Cholavaram here.

Police said, the revenue officials led by Ponneri Revenue Divisional Officer Sangeetha and the police team led by Additional Suprintendent of Police Tiruvallur Palanisamy visited the Athmalayam for the second day today and hold enquiries with the self styled godman Swami Amuthananda and other inmates of the orphanage.

They conducted searches in the orphanage premises and no indiscriminate things were seized, police added.

It was learnt that the Revenue Officials advised the Swamiji to maintain details of the donations received from the philanthropists and also to register the birth and death details of the inmates of the orphanage.

During the interrogation, the Swamiji pleaded that he was innocent, and said he was running the orphanage and providing food and shelter to the needy free of cost.

There were number of leftouts. Aged people were also staying in the orphanage and a few of them recently died due to illness. Since they did not had any relatives, their final rites were performed by him and their bodies were burried at the common burrial ground in the village, Swamiji added.

If the officials had any doubt over this, they could exhume the bodies and conduct a detailed enquiry over the natural death of old aged inmates of the orphanage, he added.

He alleged that some vested interests might have let loose certain allegations against him and the orphanage for some personal gains, the truth would come out only after a detailed enquiry.

UNI