Unholy Mess

For a holy man, it was a world of trouble. There, in a third-floor medical cell of the Mecklenburg County jail in Charlotte, N.C., sat Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh last week, facing 35 counts of conspiring to violate immigration laws. Back home in Rajneeshpuram, Ore., where he ran a 1,300-member commune that espouses free love and the good life, the Bhagwan (Revered One) was accustomed to more deferential treatment, not to mention a more elegant life- style that offered, among other amenities, no fewer than 90 Rolls-Royces.

Apparently tipped off that immigration charges against him had been secretly handed up by a federal grand jury in Portland, the Bhagwan departed forthwith from Rajneeshpuram. The guru and six disciples chartered two Learjets and took off so quickly that their pilots had to obtain final clearances while aloft. As the Bhagwan's retinue tried to arrange a flight to Bermuda, Federal Aviation Administration controllers tracked the planes. When Rajneesh's touched down at 2 a.m. at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, authorities arrested him.

In reported frail health from diabetes, assorted allergies and back ailments, the Bhagwan was incarcerated in the prison infirmary. Rajneesh's need for back surgery was the purported reason for his coming to the U.S. from Poona, India, in June 1981. The surgery was never performed, and Immigration and Naturalization Service officials have charged him with lying about it. The Government also charged the guru and seven of his aides with arranging sham marriages so that foreign disciples could move to the U.S. as spouses.

Although the sect leader was accused of immigration-law violations, INS Agent Joseph Green testified in Charlotte that the guru's followers were plotting to kill the U.S. Attorney in Portland and the Oregon attorney general if the Bhagwan was imprisoned. A week earlier, an Oregon grand jury filed attempted murder charges against Ma Anand Sheela, 35, the Bhagwan's former secretary. She had fled the commune in September, prompting accusations from Rajneesh that she had conspired to murder his physician. Sheela was arrested last week in West Germany. In addition to the attempted murder indictment, she too has been charged with violating U.S. immigration laws. If she can be extradited to the U.S., she may rejoin her guru, not in the commune she helped establish, but in a courtroom.