India’s prime minister has urged authorities to ensure a top Hindu cleric suspected in a murder case is treated well in custody and says” extreme care and consideration” must be taken in investigating the charge.
Police arrested Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi, the most respected Hindu cleric in southern India, on Nov. 11 for his suspected involvement in the slaying of Sankararaman, who worked at Jayendra’s monastery in Tamil Nadu state and had allegedly complained to the cleric about misuse of monastery funds.
Jayendra’s lawyers have denied the charges, but authorities rejected the 70-year-old cleric’s bail plea.
“ An investigation involving a person of his eminence needs to be conducted with extreme care and consideration,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was quoted as saying in a letter to Tamil Nadu state’s Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.
The state government should ” take all such measures as appropriate to ensure (Jayendra’s) physical well being,” Singh said in the letter released by the Press Information Bureau Thursday.
Such public comments on a criminal case before it reaches trial are unusual and could invite criticism that Singh is trying to influence the investigation.
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the country’s main opposition, has tried to make the matter the focus of a countrywide campaign, and has said the arrest is an insult to Hinduism.
While Singh’s federal coalition government, which took power in May, is also made up mostly of Hindus, it is considered secular unlike its BJP-led predecessor. Singh is a Sikh.
“ His Holiness ... enjoys a high religious status and position in society. The sentiments of many individuals are closely associated with His Holiness’ well-being,” Singh said in his letter.
The letter” is rare, but it is equally rare to arrest a Shankaracharya,” India’s former solicitor-general Harish Salve told The Associated Press. Shankaracharya is a title bestowed on an important Hindu cleric.