APca 07/14 0149 Rajneeshee Arrested SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) -- A fugitive follower of Ind
APca 07/14 0149 Rajneeshee Arrested
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) -- A fugitive follower of Indian guru
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was captured Monday night in Santa Cruz,
where she was visiting her gravely ill parents, a Portland
newspaper reported.
Ma Deva Kranto, also known as Gail Ellen Murphy, was arrested
in Santa Cruz on a wiretapping conspiracy charge filed during the
closure of the guru's commune in central Oregon in 1985,
according to The Oregonian.
Kranto, 45, was taken into custody after the FBI received
information that she was flying from Italy to San Francisco via
New York to visit an ailing relative, Assistant U.S. Attorney
Baron C. Sheldahl told the newspaper on Monday.
Kranto was released on her own recognizance after an
appearance before U.S. Magistrate Patricia Trumbull in San Jose.
A removal hearing for her transfer to Portland was scheduled July
23.
Meanwhile, she was ordered to surrender her passport and
report twice weekly to federal probation authorities, Sheldahl
said.
Kranto was one of 21 defendants named in a five-count federal
indictment handed down in December 1985 that alleged a massive
conspiracy to secretly intercept and record all incoming and
outgoing telephone calls at the commune-city of Rajneeshpuram.
Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's former personal secretary and
several others pleaded guilty to the wiretap conspiracy charge.
Sheela was sentenced to a 4 1/2-year prison term, which she is
serving at a federal correctional facility in Pleasanton, Calif.
However, 16 other defendants, including Kranto, either fled or
had already left the United States and could not be extradited,
Sheldahl said.
He said some of the defendants were known to be living in West
Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
The wiretapping indictment alleged that the eavesdropping
operation began as early as November 1983, when some of the
cabins at Rajneeshpuram were bugged with electronic listening
devices.
The operation was expanded in March 1984, with bugs installed
in some of the rooms of the Hotel Rajneesh and again in April
1985 when the rest of the hotel was bugged and eavesdropping
devices were placed in some residences in the commune, the
indictment alleged.
Last page !
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank
|