Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravishankar on Monday dismissed suggestions that the firing at his ashram could be due to some internal rivalry and said police cannot absolve itself of its responsibility by taking it lightly and should investigate properly.
“Let us not speculate on this. It cannot be brushed off as some personal enmity. I am very hurt at such reports,” he told reporters here when asked about reports on some police personnel indicating that the firing might have been due to internal rivalry among devotees.
Describing such reports as “baseless”, he said, “Police cannot absolve itself of its responsibility by taking it lightly. It has to be investigated properly. The fact is that the bullet was fired in the direction of my car and a devotee has been injured. It has to be taken seriously and probed.”
An unidentified gunman had on Monday fired a shot at the convoy of the 54-year-old spiritual leader when he was returning to his ‘kutir’ after delivering a discourse to his followers.
On DGP Ajai Kumar Singh terming the firing as an incident and not an attack, he said, “What is an attack. What is an incident? I do not know.”
Meanwhile, administrative head of the ashram Narendra Lamba said, “It could be a threat, it could be a terror attack. Police has to take the responsibility and probe.”
On what he meant by terror attack, Mr. Lamba said it could have been “to create some confusion, some chaos and settle some score or the other. Not a score with (Sri Sri Ravishankar), but since he has reformed many Naxalites who have come here, surrendered, transformed and joined the mainstream, this may not go well with others.”
Recounting the firing incident, Sri Sri Ravishankar said after finishing the ‘satsang’, we reached the car and boarded it “and it had just started moving when we heard a loud sound, thought it could be something which had fallen down, a cracker burst or a generator burst. It took us sometime to figure out exactly what had happened.”
