Priest Dismissed

The trustees of the Vadtal sect of Swaminarayan temple today dismissed Bhaktiswarup from the sect, who was arrested for featuring in a video sex expose, involving some its priests, Vadtal temple sources said here.

The decision to remove the priest, who is in custody of Crime Branch, was taken at a meeting of all the nine trustees in the presence of its chairman Devnandan Das, who moved the resolution to remove Bhaktiswarup and also got a nod from the Vadtal sect's highest priest Acharya Rakesh Prasad, temple authorities told PTI.

The trustees also decided to remove all luxury items from the rooms/houses of sadhus of the sect, monitor their bank balances and also punish them if anybody was found violating the guidelines that sadus were supposed to follow.

In another major decision, the trustees also decided that sadhus would henceforth not be allowed to make any administrative decisions.

Temple sources said chaos marred the temple trustees' meet mainly after the explicit CD case was busted by police and Bhaktiswarup and three others, who were agents who made the CDs, were arrested and this topic generated much heat.

During the meeting, a priest swami also accused the current chairman of 'misbehaviour', the sources added.