European cult that mixes yoga with sex sets up base in Tamil Nadu, India

A European cult that mixes yoga with sex and pornography has been found to be operating out of Chennai.

Training nearly 100 youngsters in yoga and 'tantric love' at a rented house in Chokalingam Nagar, Teynampet, for more than two years now, the Movement for Spiritual Integration in Absolute(Misa) is trying to spread across the country.

      
A team of seven Misa teachers, nationals of Denmark and Romania, is now in the city for a special camp, titled 'Tantra — The Path of Love'. A majority of them, including the lead couple Mihai Stoian and Adina Stoian, have starred in porn movies produced by Copenhagen-based production house Sublime Erotica, which the Misa group has close ties with. Misa operates under different names in different countries. It is Natha in Denmark, Tara in the US and Satya in India. 

TOI is in possession of videos that show the yoga teachers, now in India, in explicit sexual acts. Misa's supreme guru, a Romanian called Gregorian Bivolaru, has been jailed on several charges, including pornography, and is now said to have taken political asylum in Sweden. 

When asked about the videos, Mihai, the 42-year-old Romanian national who heads Misa activities in the absence of Bivolaru, said it was an experiment in spreading the group's philosophy and practice. "For many, sexuality stems from desire. We want to spread the message that it is a divine integration of masculinity and femininity to attain spirituality,".

Other Misa teachers who figure in porn videos and now in Chennai are Ulrik Lishoj (Denmark), Simona Colesniuc (Romania) and Nicole Markus (Romania). 

The foreigners' regional registration office said that as these people were on visit visas, they are not allowed to teach yoga or do any such job, but the 'teachers' have an argument. "We are only volunteers. The yoga centre is registered under a trust represented by Indians," said Angela Oestergaard, a 35-year-old Danish woman who manages Chennai Satya Esoteric Integral Yoga at Teynampet. 

'Tantra', as an ancient philosophy and practice, has different definitions. The blurb of MISA's controversial guru Bivolaru's unpublished book The Secret Tantric Path of Love has this to say: Have you ever dreamed of or aspired to make love intensely, profoundly and frantically with your beloved woman for even ten hours in a row? This book reveals a host of such secret methods in a clear and accessible language, if you allow yourself to be guided by the personal experience of the author. 

Mihai, with a salt-pepper beard and dressed in a yellow cotton shirt and trousers, doesn't quite look a yogi. But, for his disciples — he claims there are 40,000 of them in 30 countries — he is much more than that. He is a scientist (a nuclear scientist-turned-researcher in artificial intelligence, he says), philosopher and guru who teaches sexual continence as the panacea for all relationship problems. Don't mistake this continence for abstention-Misa believes sexual continence is the ability to have orgasms at will, minus the ejaculation. "It's perfect for India." Stoian says, "You can bring down the population growth without any contraceptive!" 

But that's not what he teaches at the Satya Yoga centre. It's about the coming together of the masculine and the feminine, Siva and Sakthi to attain supreme spirituality. 

Do their Indian students know about their other life? Yes and no. "I don't know if they have done such videos, but what they do in their country doesn't bother me," says Rajesh Shah (45), a manager with an engineering firm in Chennai. "Two years of learning here has made me more energetic, creative and innovative in all spheres of life." Another student, Sanjai Jain (42), a jeweller, says he has heard of the videos, but not viewed them. "Every famous person faces such allegations," he says. 

With such confidence in their students, Satya Yoga has ambitious plans in India. "We are blending ancient knowledge with modern science. The Indian potential is big. There is a big need for such a comprehensive approach on spirituality. In five years, there will be hundreds of thousands of our students in India," says Mihai, who will be flying out of the country next week. His team of seven teachers will accompany him abroad, while a few other foreigners would stay back to train Indian students.

Cops detain IIT boy, extort money for 'porn' on phone

Piyush had not expected his vacation to end in such a nightmare. After a long journey from his home in Chhattisgarh, he got off at Dadar station only to be picked up by a group of railway policemen who snatched his phone and threatened to arrest him for allegedly having pornographic clips on it. They then extorted money out of him after intimidating him with handcuffs and belts inside a locked-up police chowky.

The IIT-Bombay third year student (20), who returned from a summer break on Wednesday afternoon, said, "I was stopped by two policemen. One of them asked me to open my bag and rummaged through my belongings while the other took my phone and started playing with the keypad."

When they found nothing suspicious in the bag, they asked Piyush (name changed) to shut it. When he asked for his phone back, they took him to the chowky on the station platform. "I wondered what was wrong but they started talking roughly. They took me to a small room where another policeman was seated. He said they had found porn clips on my phone and I could go to jail for five years and be fined Rs 1 lakh," recalled Piyush.

They pulled out laminated paper clips of people who they claimed had been nabbed for storing porn on their phone. Piyush demanded they show him what they had found on his phone. "They showed me the phone for a fleeting second. I didn't notice anything. Then, they pulled out a belt and a pair of handcuffs. I was terrified. I didn't know what was going on, or what I should do."

The policemen started demanding Rs 10,000 to settle the matter, claimed Piyush. "I told them that I just had a little more than Rs 2,000 on me. They took the money. Then they noticed an ATM card in my wallet. One of the policemen changed into civilian clothes and took me to a nearby ATM. I withdrew another Rs 5,000 and handed it to him. He demanded to see my bank balance and when he noticed I had about 8,000 rupees there, he demanded more money," said Piyush.

The engineering student pleaded and said his parents had filled his account because he needed to pay the fees. "Then the policeman agreed to let me go." They told Piyush they would delete the porn clips from his phone to spare him further trouble.

Piyush said he didn't know whether to feel relieved at being let go, or cheated, or angry. He went to Powai where he related his experience at the station to the dean of students' affairs, Prakash Gopalan. The dean called in IIT-Bombay's security personnel. "We contacted the senior inspector at the Powai police station to help lodge a complaint and recover the student's money. He in turn contacted the Dadar GRP office," said Gopalan.

Accompanied by the security staff, Piyush went back to Dadar station. Fearing that the matter might make its way to the top, the policemen returned his money. "They requested that I don't file a complaint and offered to give me another Rs 6,000. I refused. Finally they paid me Rs 1,000 more for the 'inconvenience' caused and apologized too," said Piyush.

He realized that this wasn't the first time the policemen had pulled a trick like this. "The entire episode was so perfectly set up." Shivaji Shinde, senior inspector of GRP at Dadar station, said that although there was no formal complaint against the policemen who had taken money from Piyush, they had been moved to another post.

Railway police commissioner Tukaram Chavan said he had often warned his men not to check passengers' mobile phones or laptops. He promised to conduct a departmental inquiry.

This paper will follow the story to see if action is taken against these as-yet-unnamed policemen.

Times View 
Such cases of intimidation and extortion are all-too commonplace— it's just that this time the policemen made the mistake of picking on a student from one of the world's most elite education institutes, instead of poor, helpless people from the margins of society. Merely taking disciplinary action against the errant policemen won't be justice enough. They have not only violated the privacy of a citizen without provocation, they are also guilty of wrongful harassment and extortion. This calls for prosecution of the individual policemen for these criminal offences. Moreover, the victim should be entitled to file for damages in a civil case against the railway police, just as Krittika Biswas is doing for wrongful arrest and detention in New York. Only if both the individual wrongdoers and the institution they represent face serious consequences, will there be a deterrent effect.