Chennai, December 9
The Tamil Nadu police rounded off a busy day getting the judicial remand of Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati extended for another 14 days till December 23 in the two-year-old assault case on former mutt associate G. Radhakrishnan in the 23rd Metropolitan Magistrate Uma Maheshwari’s court here while the seer’s camp decided to file an appeal in the Supreme Court.
After briefly meeting the seer in Vellore prison, mutt advocate Krishnamani flew to New Delhi with the relevant papers today. Mutt sources said bail would be sought in both the Sankara Raman murder case as well as the Radhakrishnan assault case. They also hinted that if bail was still further denied, their lawyers would seek house arrest and demand the transfer of the case out of Tamil Nadu.
There was no drama in the magistrate’s court as the pontiff’s remand was extended through the videoconferencing facility. He was already in custody when declared arrested in this case on November 23. The seer was brought from Vellore Central Prison three days later to Chennai and remanded till today.
Magistrate Maheshwari had waived the seer’s appearance earlier. She ruled today that the arrangement would continue during the next hearing as well.
Journalists were kept away from the video-conference but sources in the court indicated that “the pontiff was cheerful and in good health.”
Meanwhile, Mr S. Gurumurthy, a columnist and founder of Sangh outfit Swadeshi Jagran Manch, answered questions of the police in Kanchipuram about various claims in his writings. The deposition lasted three hours.
