Puttaparthi:
As thousands of devotees stood in serpentine queues through the night and early Monday outside Prashanti Nilayam for a last glimpse of Sathya Sai Baba, scores of VIPs, including politicians, celebrities, stars and top officials had the privilege to enter Kulwant Hall through the back door to pay their last respects to the spiritual leader.
The brazen discrimination by the Sai Trust and the high-handed policemen was not confined to VIPs entry into the hall on the sly, but also to their vehicles that were allowed till the iron gates, while devotees had to walk a few kilometres to reach the Nilayam in this pilgrim town, about 150 km from Bangalore.
Though Baba's body was brought from the Satya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences to his abode, eight hours after he breathed last around 8 a.m. on Sunday, humble devotees, including men, women and children, had to wait for over four hours to file past the body for a few seconds amid hymns, devotional songs and music.
When hundreds of emotional devotees expressed outrage over the delay in letting them into hall by surging menacingly to gatecrash as their patience wore thin, trust volunteers in white and men in khaki pushed them back.
"So many VIPs are allowed to see our god so quickly without standing in queue, while we have been made to wait hours to enter the hall," bemoaned S. Anjaneyulu, 43, a school teacher who came from Kurnool to pay his last respects.
The two queues that were formed separately for men and women got longer stretching 1-2 km from the Nilayam's main entrance through the wee hours of Monday.
"The trust authorities and police failed to regulate the queues and control the restive crowds from breaking away. It took me two hours to reach the hall and was shoved away in a second by the volunteers that prevented me from seeing Baba's body closely and paying my homage," lamented B. Venkanna, 54, a businessman and an ardent devotee of Baba for over two decades.
In contrast to the chaos and unruly scenes outside the Nilayam, trust volunteers maintained a semblance of order in the illuminated hall, where Baba's body was placed on a dais surrounded in a semi-circle by several trust members, close devotees, a few VIPs and teaching faculty of Sai educational institutes in the town.
Andhra Pradesh Health Minister J. Geetha Reddy, Ratnakar, Baba's nephew and son of his younger brother Janakiramaiah and Baba's personal caregiver Satyajit sat close to the casket as devotees, many sobbing, filed past the body in quick succession.
To prevent crowding the hall, none of the devotees, except VIPs and trustees, were allowed to remain in the hall for more than a minute.
"We managed to reach here by changing two buses en-route with great difficulty as there was such a rush to get into any vehicle passing through Puttaparthi. With hotels and shops shut in the town, we didn't have anything eat or sip since evening though we have not been hungry due to mourning," B. Parvathi, 48, a homemaker from Ananthapur, 70 km away, and Baba's devotee since her teens as her parents were his ardent followers, told IANS.
Amidst tight security and deployment of about 6,000 policemen on round-the-clock duty to maintain law and order and prevent any untoward incident, this sleepy town in the backward region of Rayalaseema has become a beehive of activity since the passing away of the 85-year-old guru who was godman to millions of his followers in India and around the world.