Authorities raid ranch, search for evidence
A swarm of state and federal agents, looking for evidence of attempted murder and other crimes, have confiscated medical and hotel records and searched a lake used for nude bathing at the commune of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
Police served seven search warrants Wednesday in a widening investigation of claims by the 53-year-old Indian guru that more than a dozen of his former chief disciples plotted assassination attempts, poisonings, arson and wiretapping.
The former leaders, led by the guru’s personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela, fled his central Oregon commune Sept. 14 and are reportedly in Europe. Sheela has denied the guru’s charges and fired back some of her own allegations in an interview published in this week’s edition of the German magazine Stern.
The 35-year-old ex-personal secretary to Rajneesh said the guru has only a fraction of the 500,000 followers worldwide claimed by the sect. She put the number at 30,000.
Sheela also accused him of being a spoiled leader whose interests centered mostly on his own riches and a daily doses of laughing gas and tranquilizers.
— The Dalles Daily Chronicle, Oct. 3, 1985
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