New Delhi:
Stringent MCOCA was on Sunday invoked against a self-styled Godman, recently caught here on charges of running a multi-crore sex racket, with police claiming he was "eyeing big donations" from foreign agencies, including Christian missionaries.
39-year-old Shiv Murat Dwivedi alias Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale, who was caught along with one of his associates and six women ten days ago, "did not want" to enter politics but wanted to use his followers as a "vote bank" to further his influence.
"We have invoked Section 3 of MCOCA against Dwivedi. There are more than five cases and two chargesheets against him. An FIR under MCOCA has been registered at Saket Police Station yesterday," Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) H G S Dhaliwal told reporters here.
If convicted, the jail term could be between five years and life imprisonment and a fine of up to Rs five lakh.
According to the police, Dwivedi, a self-claimed Sai Baba devotee, was earning money through five channels: real estate, money lending, prostitution, donations and by conducting special religious programmes. "We have found four accounts in the name of Dwivedi in the capital," he said.
"He was trying to take off and planning his future. His eyes were on big donations. He was eyeing foreign donations, including from Christian missionaries," Dhaliwal said. Dwivedi was like a "Managing Director" of a company, monitoring his businesses.
Dwivedi was looking after "all the logistics" involved in his business.
He used to pick up phone and start conversation with a salutation Jai Sriram. If the caller talked about religious programmes, he will answer that and if it was about escort services, he dealt with that also with the same ease, Dhaliwal said.
"His mistake was that he used the same number for all the purpose. It became easy for us to develop inputs about him and catch him," he said, adding Dwivedi also ran a website on escorts services.
Though Dwivedi projected himself as a spiritual guru, he said, Dwivedi did not give any one who defaulted in payment of loans taken from him and he charged a "criminally high" interest rate at five to seven per cent per month.
The Godman was so clever that his clients were from the middle-class or lower middle-class so that they will not approach police when he used intimidation to recover the loan amount.
Police have found that Dwivedi owns two properties in Madhya Pradesh's Chitrakoot, where investigators had taken the Godman for further investigations. The investigators could not
enter Chitrakoot as his henchmen have allegedly managed to assemble more than 2,000 people near his ashram there.
He was planning to build a 200-bed hospital in his village.