Legal reprieve for both Shankaracharyas

Sanjay Pinto
Friday, February 11, 2005 (Chennai):

It was a day of one legal reprieve after another, for the two Kanchi Shankaracharyas, Jayendra Saraswati and Vijayendra Saraswati today.

While the junior seer walked out of the Chennai Central Prison on conditional bail, the senior acharya got anticipatory bail in another case.

Vijayendra Saraswati was released a month after his controversial arrest at the Kanchi Mutt in the Sankararaman murder case.

The seer headed straight to this house right behind the city's Kamakshi Amman Temple.

He has been ordered him not to leave Chennai by the Madras High Court, which granted him bail on Thursday.

Bail for senior seer

The senior Shankaracharya was also granted anticipatory bail by the Madras High Court, in the tampering of Mutt accounts case.

"These are all false cases," alleged KS Dinakaran, Kanchi Mutt lawyer.

Later in the day, another judge of the High Court held that the freezing of the 183 Mutt accounts by the Kancheepuram Police last month was illegal.

The judge however asked the Mutt authorities to submit a statement of their accounts to the Special Investigation Team every month.

"It's perhaps the beginning of the end. Things are slowly getting back to normal I guess," said Y Thyagarajan, another Kanchi Mutt lawyer.

Now, with both the Shankaracharyas out of prison, and the shadow of arrest in fresh cases having receded, devotees of the Kanchi Mutt say they can finally breathe easy.