BHOPAL: Two months after being awarded the Minister of State (MoS) rank by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government in Madhya Pradesh, model-turned-spiritual guru Bhaiyyu Maharaj, allegedly shot himself to death possibly over personal issues at his bungalow in Indore on Tuesday afternoon.
The 50-year-old self-styled godman who holds close ties with several top politicians of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra committed suicide by shooting his head using a gun in one of the rooms of his bungalow in Silver Springs township in Tejaji Nagar area of Indore at around 12.30 pm.
When the incident happened, besides Bhaiyyu Maharaj (originally named Udai Singh Deshmukh), his two domestic helps were present in the house. Hearing the gunshot sound, the domestic helps rushed to his room, but the door was locked from inside.
On breaking open the locked door, the godman was found lying on the floor with blood oozing from his head. The matter was reported to the police and he was rushed to the Bombay Hospital in Indore, where doctors declared him dead later.
The SP (Indore East) Avdhesh Goswami confirmed the godman’s death. While maintaining that it was prima facie a suicide, the SP didn’t reveal whether any suicide note has been found from the spot or not.
The godman’s body has been sent to the government-run MY Hospital for autopsy, police sources said.
While the police officials remained tight-lipped over the reasons behind the alleged suicide, some informed sources confided that the spiritual guru (having big following in Maharashtra and MP) ended life over some personal issues.
The 50-year-old Bhaiyyu Maharaj, born as Udai Singh Deshmukh in a family of agriculturists in Shujalpur town of Madhya Pradesh in 1968, was among the five Hindu religious leaders who were accorded MoS status in April 2018 by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
He ran a trust called Shri Sadguru Datta Dharmik and Parmarthik Trust in Indore. The trust was established in 1996 with the aim to ‘inculcate the spirit of liveliness in each human being and to make him a perfect citizen with social vision. The trust also aimed to inculcate the spirit of nationhood, among others’.
Bhaiyyu Maharaj, who had a daughter and an ailing mother, married a second time in 2017. The spiritual entered wedlock with a Dr Ayushi (a dentist from Gwalior).
A science graduate, Maharaj has done modelling for Siyaram Suiting in his younger days. During his student life, he was involved in several extracurricular activities like horse riding, fencing, wrestling, cricket, badminton, music and poetry.
Since the age of 23, he has been into social and spiritual works and also runs a website bhayyumaharaj.com.
The godman is a new age guru, who drives a car and surfs the internet. His political followers are mostly from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
He had shot to limelight when the UPA II regime sent him as a special mediator to persuade social activist Anna Hazare to call off his fast at New Delhi’s Ramlilla Ground.
Bhaiyyu Maharaj, who has friends across parties lines and whose list of followers range from former Maharashtra CMs Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sharad Pawar to union minister Nitin Gadkari, MNS chief Raj Thackeray and world famous singer Lata Mangeshkar, spent considerable time with Narendra Modi and was present with spiritual heads of other communities when the chief Minister broke his three-day fast in 2011.
In the last Maharashtra assembly elections when the strain between BJP and Shiv Sena over the allocation of tickets had got too complicated with a high number of ticket seekers, Bhaiyyu Maharaj was roped in for reconciliation between different ticket aspirants.