The wild goose chase over the mysterious shooting at Sri Sri Ravishankar's Art of Living (AoL) ashram has finally ended: a farmer living adjacent to the ashram fired three shots to scare away wild dogs from attacking his cattle, one of which accidentally landed in the ashram.
A senior police official said the farmer, who owns a licensed 0.32 pistol, has 10 acres right next to the AoL ashram on Kanakapura road, 30 km south of Bangalore city.
On the evening of May 30, he heard some barking and, as was his normal practice, took his pistol and fired three rounds in the air. One of the bullets, on its downward trajectory (called the dead bullet), grazed the thigh of Vinay K., a Sri Sri Ravishankar follower. This created an L-shaped burn on his trousers and discoloured his skin.
The Ramanagaram district police recovered the bullet and sent it for analysis to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL). They also matched the bullet with that in the farmer's pistol and found they were of the same make. This was also confirmed by the FSL.
The incident occurred a few minutes after the AoL founder left a satsang in his car. There was some brouhaha on the part of the ashram acolytes after Director-General and Inspector-General of Police Ajai Kumar Singh termed it an ‘incident'.
