LIC clerk turned kalki Bhagwan

The self-professed ‘godman’ who amassed a fortune is under intense legal scrutiny, report M Radhika and Harinder Baweja

In the early eighties he was a clerk at the Life Insurance Corporation. Later, he became the administrator of a school tucked away in Rajupeta village in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district. Today, he has thousands of followers, travels in a Mercedes Benz and has a business empire worth crores. V Vijayakumar, the LIC clerk proclaimed himself to be ‘Kalki Bhagwan’ (the tenth avatar of Vishnu), and in a little over ten years, has properties spread over Andhra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. By his side is his wife V Padmavathi, who is also ordained to be goddess Bhagvathi Amma.

Their cult is based on devotion to god and spiritualism. But even the most ardent of devotees have to cough up hard cash to meet the ‘godman’. Thousands do. They believe he can spiritually cure all diseases just as he can make bananas pop out of his photographs. Among his followers are those who want to learn the art of spiritual materialism. If you want an Opel Astra, he can close his eyes and tell you if you will own one or not. Ask him if your dream of marrying Aishwarya Rai will be realised, he will close his eyes and tell you that it won’t be her but someone who looks just like her. That’s what he propagates, if his own literature is anything to go by.

To some however, he is nothing but an opportunistic fraudster. Vishwanath Swami, a former colleague of his from Rajupeta, is one such person. Swami has closely followed the growth of the cult. He went to court over the “rural trusts” that they set up. In a public interest litigation (PIL) that he took to the Madras High Court and then to the Supreme Court, he alleges that “business entitites and private limited companies they set up and large sums of money received through cash donations for rural work are being siphoned off”. He says personal assets are being created through these donations.

The PIL was filed in the Madras High Court in November 2002 and apart from the ‘godman’ and his wife, several relatives including his son, NKV Krishna and his daugher-in-law Preetha were made respondents. So were state agencies including the home ministry, the police and the income tax department.

The court dismissed the petition in September 2003 saying “the authorities were aware of the situation and it was up to them to take action”. But what did the authorities do? They were informed about the violations nine months before the PIL was filed and Swami went to court only because the agencies were dragging their feet. The villagers from Rajupeta had also signed affidavits confirming that while these ‘trusts’ were collecting donations, “nothing had been done for the rural poor for whom the trusts were specifically created”.

The Tamil Nadu state crime branch, in its counter affidavit to the high court, said it was not within their authority to investigate the case since the trusts were receiving money from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and New Delhi as well as from abroad. The state income tax authorities took a year to reply saying the verification process was still on. In its affidavit, G Muthuramakrishnan, Director of Income Tax, Investigation, (a copy of which is with Tehelka) did give some details that clearly indict the ‘godman’, his family members and employees.

The report dated January 24, 2003 states that MM Giri alias Acharya Anandagiri, who was a student at the Jeevashram School where the ‘godman’ was earlier employed as the administrator, admitted in his fund flow statement (from 1998 to 2001) “that he had made gifts of Rs 2.53 crore” to Krishna and Preetha, Kalki’s son and daughter-in-law