Guru Accepts Plea Bargain, Leaves Country

Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh pleaded guilty Thursday to helping arrange sham marriages to evade immigration laws, paid a $400,000 fine and left the United States aboard a chartered jet.

“I never want to return again,” the lavender-robed Rajneesh said after U.S. District Judge Edward Leavy ordered the spiritual leader to stay out of the United States for at least five years as part of a plea bargain.

Rajneesh collected a $100,000 refund from the $500,000 bail he posted Nov. 8, climbed into a waiting Rolls-Royce and, with a police escort, sped to Portland International Airport.

Busloads of his disciples watched and waved as the guru boarded the private jet, loaded with his personal belongings. He was accompanied by Swami Deveraj, his personal physician, Yoga Vivek, his longtime female companion, and other sect leaders.

To avoid prosecution on a 35-count federal grand jury indictment alleging that he arranged sham marriages to help his foreign disciples remain in the United States, the 53-year-old guru pleaded guilty to two counts.

‘Asserts His Innocence’

The U.S. attorney’s office, which said Rajneesh initiated the compromise, agreed to drop the remaining charges and accept a 10-year suspended sentence that includes five years’ probation.

One of Rajneesh’s attorneys, Brian O’Neill, said the guru still “asserts his innocence” but changed his plea because of his concern about “possible danger or possible harassment were he to remain” in the United States.

Swami Dhayan John, the sect’s chief financial officer, told followers at the Rajneeshpuram commune Thursday night, that Rajneesh was headed for “an undisclosed location in the Himalayas.”

The guru also has a large following in Europe and Japan and it had been rumored in recent months that Rajneesh planned to move to Australia if he ever left the United States.

U.S. Atty. Charles Turner said, “It’s my understanding he will fly to New Delhi.”

Rajneesh left his ashram in Poona, India, in 1981, after he reportedly was faced with tax problems.

Under the bargain, approved by Leavy, Rajneesh agreed not to reapply for any type of entrance into the United States for five years and agreed that any such application may be granted only by the U.S. attorney general’s office.

Turner said the guru also would order the dismissal of four civil lawsuits filed by his sect, two against the Immigration and Naturalization Service, one against the State Department and one against U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin M. Meese and other government officials.

Rajneesh pleaded innocent last week to the immigration law charges, which included arranging sham marriages, conspiracy and lying to federal authorities about his original intent to remain in the United States. He had claimed that he needed back surgery but he did not have the operation.

Jailed by Marshals

Two weeks ago, the day the charges were made public by a federal grand jury in Portland, Rajneesh and eight followers were jailed by federal marshals in Charlotte, N.C., after the guru’s two chartered Learjets landed there in what the government said was an effort to flee to Bermuda to avoid prosecution.

The day after his arrest, Rajneesh vowed in a North Carolina newspaper interview “to move out of America because this behavior has wounded me very badly.” The government, he complained, had “turned an innocent person into a prisoner.”

The guru and several hundred followers moved to the high desert of central Oregon in 1981 and took over the city government of the small town of Antelope.

Their 64,000-acre Rajneeshpuram commune, about 120 miles southeast of Portland, eventually attracted about 2,000 followers. Its flamboyance attracted nationwide attention. Commune leaders, while turning the desolate land into a productive oasis, preached liberal attitudes toward sex, changed Antelope’s name to City of Rajneesh after winning control of its City Council and last year bused in hundreds of street people from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to bolster their ranks. In response, many longtime residents of Antelope (whose name was restored by the town’s voters last week) moved out in disgust.

Top Aide Flees

The commune’s harmony began to crumble in September when the guru’s top aide, Ma Anand Sheela, and about a dozen other followers fled to Europe amid charges by Rajneesh that they had attempted murders, bugged telephones and absconded with millions of dollars.

Sheela, who was Rajneesh’s personal secretary, is in custody in West Germany. She faces Oregon state charges of attempting to murder the guru’s personal physician.

A Wasco County, Ore., grand jury is hearing allegations that Sheela and other commune defectors were responsible for that attempted murder as well as for food poisoning, water contamination and arson. A federal grand jury in Portland is looking at the wiretapping claims.

In addition, federal investigators alleged recently that devotees of Rajneesh tried to assassinate Oregon’s U.S. attorney and its attorney general to thwart criminal probes of the commune.

Swami Dhayan John said people were free to leave the commune if they wished, but it would stay in operation with the residents looking for ways to exploit natural resources on the vast former ranch. He said the property had deposits of gold, silver, coal and geothermal energy.

“We’re going to stay here. We’re not leaving. I’m sure some people will leave because some were here only because Bhagwan was here,” he said.

John, president of Rajneesh Investment Corp., also said the guru’s infamous 93 Rolls Royces would be sold.