Hindu ‘God-Man’ in British Airways prostitution scandal

A Hindu clergyman and self-styled “god-man” with over 100,000 reputed followers in India has been caught running a US$10 million high-end prostitution racket involving British Airways hostesses.

Shiv Myra Dwivedi, aka Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale, 39, claims to be a follower of the legendary Shirdi Sai Baba. Dwivedi was allgedly using his Sai Baba Temple in Khanpur, South Delhi as a front for an operation that employed somewhere between 60 and 200 prostitutes across India. Also found inside Dwivedi’s temple were drug and pornography caches on an epic scale. Adding to the fun, it appears that phone records found inside the temple link the prostitution operation to prominent Delhi cops, Indian television stars and politicians.

The Indian press is already calling Dwivedi the “pimp guru.”

The operation of the “pimp guru” employed mainly students and air hostesses, including British Airways and Jagson employees. Dwivedi was arrested over the weekend by Delhi police while conducting a deal with another (alleged) pimp behind a cinema in the city’s Saket neighborhood. A police team sent to raid Dwivedi’s temple subsequently found a labyrinth of hidden tunnels and rooms that contained personal diaries, cash, financial records for the operation and healthy supplies of pornography and undisclosed illegal drugs. According to Delhi authorities, the Swami hid the entrance to the secret tunnels in a meditation room.

The “pimp guru” also runs a 200-bed hospital and has several power political patrons in the Samajwadi Party and reportedly has several well-known politicians among his clients.

But for all of Dwivedi’s religious trappings, his pimp skills seem defiantly old-school:

“He used the guise of spirituality to run an organised prostitution racket since 1999 and has made billions of rupees by supplying women to his high-profile clients,” said a police officer, refusing to be named.

“He would force young women to join the sex racket, offered them money, expensive gifts and had even provided them with cars.”

Apart from the Delhi temple, the prostitution operation also rented out of several rented houses in Delhi and in the state of Uttar Pradesh. According to Indian sources, his non-Indian prostitutes would dress only in saffron clothes in public to avoid suspicion.

Dwivedi, a native of Uttar Pradesh, worked his way up from a security guard at a massage parlor in the 1990s to become a prominent guru. But he had trouble along the way: Dwivedi was previously arrested in 2000 for running a prostitution ring centered around yoga and meditation workshops.Strangest of all, reports indicate that Dwivedi’s father and brother were previously arrested on unrelated murder allegations in his hometown of Chitrakoot.

British Airways is investigating the allegations.