Times of India, 13 Nov 2008
The website displays Sudhakar as a crusader
by Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui, TNN
LUCKNOW: “To restore the age-old glory of Sharda Mandir in PoK. To make aware our countrymen about the dangers in Kashmir spreading in the whole country. To contribute to the struggle of displaced Hindus in their rehabilitation.
Publication of rare manuscripts of Kashmir. To organise “Dharma Bachao- Desh Bachao Yatra aur Rashtra Raksha Yagya” .... reads the welcome message on the home page of the website (www.sarvagyapeeth.com) of Sharda Sarvagyapeeth of Swami Amritanand Dev Tirth Shankaracharya alias Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey — the Malegaon blast connection of Uttar Pradesh who was detained by the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Mumbai Police.
Investigators say that Amritanand is a self-proclaimed Shankaracharya and has no association with other establish peeths in India.
The website was traced after Sudhakar himself provided the address to the interrogators after he was picked up from Kanpur and brought to Lucknow. Created supposedly with a copyright registration of 2007 the website has an impressive homepage but most of the Sarvagyapeeth literarature is photocopies of January 2007 edition of the opening pages of Sharda Sandesh — a quaterly bilingual newsletter from the Sarvagyapeeth.
Sources associated with the probe said that Sudhakar had met all the Malegaon blast accused arrested so far by the ATS and was in regular touch with them. “His name figured in the interrogation of almost all the accused — be it the senior army officers or Sadhvi Pragya herself,” admitted a senior officer of the ATS here on Wednesday night. Investigators were now trying to retract all the e-mails sent from and received by the two e-mail IDs of Sudhakar and transaction details of his account with a nationalised bank that was discovered during the initial stages of his interrogation.
Sources said that after his initial stay at Kanpur, Sudhakar shifted to Varanasi from where he reached Jammu in 2005-06 where he floated the Sarvagyapeeth. Investigators believe that the genuine Peeth actually existed in Pak occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Sudhakar opened a Peeth in Kashmir on his own. “We are yet to establish any link between the PoK Peeth and the one launched by Sudhakar,” said a senior officer associated with the probe.
As per the website, the Sarvagyapeeth has its registered office at 248, Sector 1-A, Trikuta Nagar, Jammu Tavi 180012, J&K with phone numbers 9419190809 and 0191-2471031.
While the mobile number was unapproachable, the landline number was attended by a male. When asked by TOI if it was the telelphone number of Sarvagyapeeth, a sleepy voice on the other side retorted: “ Sonay do bhai ... yeh koi peeth veeth ka number nahin hai ” (Please let me sleep. This number doesn;t belong to any peeth) before he hung up. The cellphone number (9419194506) provided against the camp office of the Peeth was also not contactable. The camp office address read at Maa Sharika Mandir, Village Anangpur, Faridabad (Harayana) with emailaddressesshardapeeth@gmail.com and sarvagyapeethkashmir@sancharnet.in.
The most impressive part of the website is the picture gallery showing Swami Amritanand Dev Tirth Shankaracharya alias Sudhakar Dwivedi in conversation with some important personalities of the country including a former president of India, a film star and a bureaucrat apart from a stream of political personalities from across the country.
Out of the six patrons of the Sarvagyapeeth, as mentioned in the website, at least four are Padamshri and one hails from Lucknow. The Sanatan Yatra page of the website also contains 21 pictures showing Sudhakar addressing students at a school and his followers.
A separate page attributed to donations announces that all amounts given as donation are exempted from income tax under section 80G of the Income Tax Act 1961.
The Sarvagyapeeth offers three categories of memberships including founder / life member at Rs 21,000, honourable/special life member for Rs 5,100 and life member for Rs 2,100.
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