Following the demise of Sathya Sai Baba, the Andhra Pradesh government, which has been in talks with the trustees at Puttaparthi, wants to ensure that the take over of the trust should be free from any controversy.
The trust has faced a couple of allegations in the past relating to misappropriation, but the biggest ever controversy to have haunted Prashanthi Nilayam was on June 6 1993, when four persons were shot dead by the police after they had stabbed four devotees in Baba's bedroom, killing two and serious injuring the other two.
At Prashanthi Nilayam in Puttaparthi, Sai devotees term this incident as unfortunate but state that a lot of media talk about how this was 'stage managed' is all rubbish.
At around 9.20 pm on June 6, 1993, four men armed with knives gained entry into the mandir. However, they were stopped by four devotees who fought with them.
In the tussle, two devotees Sai Kumar and N Radhakrishna were stabbed to death while Anil and Vishnu Bhatt were injured seriously.
An alarm was sounded and all the fllod lights in the ashram were put on. Sathya Sai Baba, who was at the mandir, managed to escape into the other room. The four men had then stationed themselves at the mandir but the police entered into the scene and shot all the four dead.
There have been various theories to this incident. One of the theories was that the real target was Radhakrishna who had threatened to expose the misdeeds of the trust.
However, during the police investigation none of these allegations came out in the open. The police repeatedly maintained that they had to fire in self defence.
Further they had also claimed that there was an imminent danger to the life of Baba as the assailants had planned a hostage crisis and hence they had to shoot them down.
In addition to this, there were demands and also a writ petition which sought a proper investigation into the matter, but the allegations were that the all powerful trust was able to scuttle this.
Devotees at Puttaparthi would like to forget this incident and that horrific night. They say that Baba knew everything and had even warned his devotees against this, but they had not paid heed to his advise.
"We feel that the media only tried and sensationalised the incident and reported everything but the truth," a devotee said.
