Hardly 12 hours after the Bagepalli police arrested a man Saturday night and seized Rs 35 lakh belonging to the Yajurmandiram of the late spiritual master Sri Satya Sai Baba of Puttaparthy, the Ananthapuram police on Sunday morning recovered more than Rs. 5 Cr from two gunny bags being transported in a RTC bus to Bangalore from Puttaparthy and arrested two men belonging to Tamil Nadu.

The arrests and seizure of money confirm earlier reports that the trust members had illegally shifted crores of rupees and gold belonging to the trust owned by the late Satya Sai Baba. It may be mentioned that a section of the AP media reported some days ago that two truck loads of gold were illegally transported to Bangalore from Puttaparthy. The allegations were denied by the Trust members then.

The Ananthapuram police have already recorded the statement of one Mr Harishananda Shetty from whom they had confiscated Rs.35 lakh and produced him before the district magistrate this morning. The magistrate remanded him to judicial custody till June 27.

In his statement, Shetty said that the amount belonged to the Yajurmandiram of Puttaparthy and was given to him by Mr Sekhar, the driver of the Satya Sai Central Trust member Mr Srinivasan.

The district SP Mr. Shanawaj said that they would send notices to the Trust members and interrogate them based on the statement given by Shetty.

In a cinematic manner, the Bagepalli police stopped the green-coloured multi-utility vehicle bearing the number HP-66-0999 after the Penugonda police alerted them. The Penugonda police earlier chased the vehicle but failed to catch it but they asked their counterparts in Bagepalli to stop it.   

Shetty, a native of Ajjarakadu in Udupi, is an employee of a private construction company in Bangalore and was at Puttaparthi to supervise the construction of the samadhi of Satya Sai Baba.

The vehicle was registered in the name of Himachal Joint Venture with the regional transport office Kullu on December 10, 2002. Meanwhile, the two men who were arrested while ferrying the currency in gunny bags through RTC bus are being interrogated.