Police Make Deal With Bhagwan

Police today agreed to stop trying to evict Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the high-living guru forced to leave the United States in 1985, from his headquarters commune and made a deal with his followers, officials said.

The police fashioned a conditional deal to allow Rajneesh to temporarily remain at the settlement as long as there was no “obscene behavior” or liquor consumption in the commune or outside it. Thousands of people, most of them young Westerners from wealthy families, flocked to the Indian commune after it was founded in 1974. But Pune residents objected to many of Rajneesh’s practices, which reportedly included disco dancing and nude psychotherapy.