Court remands Amritachaitanya to 5 days police custody

Kochi, May 14 (UNI) A lower court here today remanded controversial Swami Amritachaitanya alias Santosh Madhavan, charged with rape of minor girls, making of pornographic films and financial fraud, into five days police custody.

Police, which had arrested Santosh Madhavan here yesterday, produced him at the residence of Judicial First Class Magistrate-II K S Sharatchandran this morning.

The magistrate allowed the police application to remand the accused into police custody for interrogation.

He will now be produced before the court on May 19.

Police had yesterday arrested Madhavan after registering a case of rape of minor girls, whose studies he had sponsored. Earlier, the police had also raided a guest house run by his 'Santhitheeram Trust' and his residence at Kadvanthara here.

The raids were conducted following a complaint from non-resident Keralite businesswoman Serafin Edwin that the swami had cheated her of Rs 40 lakh in Dubai in 2002 .

In the raid on the swami's flat on Saturday night, police had seized a tiger skin valued at Rs 150,000, pornograhic CDs and magazines, a police uniform, a liqour bottle and some documents relating to land deals.

Following-up on the pornographic CDs, the police had registered the complaint of a 15-year-old girl that the bogus swami had raped her on several occasions in 2006. He had allegedly exploited several other minor girls also and made pornogrpahic CDs using them.

An Interpol lookout notice was issued against him in the cheating case.

Yesterday, the Kerala high court had rejected his anticipatory bail plea.

UNI XR ARC DK1100