A FUGITIVE yoga sect leader who aimed to have sex with 1,000 virgins was arrested in France over allegations of rape, human trafficking and kidnapping.
Gregorian Bivolaru, 71, and 40 of his followers were captured in a morning raid by the French police.
It reportedly took 175 officers to carry out the arrest on different branches of the crazy cult.
The sect named the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA) held 26 women in “deplorable conditions”, reported AFP news agency.
The 71-year-old Romanian leader was arrested at a house in Paris suburbs with other cult leaders.
French prosecutors began investigating the group in summer on suspicions of rape, people trafficking and kidnapping.
There were allegations of people forced to have sex and perform in pornography.
According to judicial sources, the victims spoke of women being held against their will.
Bivolaru was previously convicted in Romania for sex with a minor in 2013.
At the time, he resided in France and was extradited to his home country in 2016.
But he fled Romania in 2017 when he was conditionally released.
He is also wanted in Finland on suspicion of human trafficking.
Bivolaru started teaching yoga in 1978 when it was still illegal in Romania under the communist rule.
He founded his sinister cult in the 1990s and spread beyond the country promoting “erotic tantric yoga”.
Since then, MISA opened schools in almost 30 countries under different names.
It is Natha in Denmark and Portugal, Tara in the US and UK and Satya in India.
In 2010, he published a book on tantric yoga that describes him as a teenager achieving “a whole series of psycho-mental accomplishment that are generally considered paranormal”.
But the movement has been caught up in controversies in the past.
In Italy, the cult was accused of sexual slavery in 2012, meanwhile in India and Argentina the group was entangled in scandals of “porno-yoga” in 2011.
Bivolaru, who refers to himself as a guru, was said to have forced his followers to have group sex with him and hand him large sums of money, reported the BBC,
One of the victims, Agnes Arabela Marques, had a relationship with the guru when she was 15.
She said: “Bivolaru claimed that, if I had sex with him as a yoga master, I could achieve superior levels of tantric spirituality.”
“In his apartment, there were constantly girls that were there to have sex with him.”
She also added that Bivolaru believed in an Indian myth that said he could achieve a high level of spirituality if he slept with 1,000 virgins.
Seppo Isotalo, a Finnish human rights activist, tried to help MISA in its trial for almost two years.
He told a Finnish media MOT about his secret encounter with the movement’s guru in 2007.
“It was a most peculiar occasion; first we had to sit down and wait for him for several hours.
“And when he showed up, the people in the room jumped to kiss his feet. I didn’t,” he said.
Isotalo claimed that the guru exploited his followers for money, sending women to Japan to dance at striptease-clubs.
The most devoted members live in ashrams, or spiritual communities.
One of them was based in a farm owned by a Danish yoga practitioner Kim Schmock.
He told in an interview with MOT that he didn’t realise straight away that something was wrong.
He said that once he got involved, the group gradually became more and more controlling.
“All the expectations they have: ‘You have to do this, you have to do that’, and suddenly you don’t have time to your friends, you don’t have time to your family.
“They will be your family – and actually, when you realize this, it’s often too late.”
Schmock said he had to leave his home and move in a trailer close to the farm as MISA members refused to vacate his property.
He had to continue paying the mortgage for the farm, leaving him penniless.
He also spoke about the weird and “very erotic” rituals the cult would perform.
Schmock said: “They have this annual event in the summertime where they have this Miss-Shakti contest, and it’s very erotic – and this is part of the tantra.”
According to the Finnish media MOT, MISA hold an annual summer camp where masturbation in front of video cameras was part of the camp’s Miss Shakti competition.
To be accepted to the camp, every participant has to send two photographs, presenting her- or himself in a bikini or swimming trunks.
Participation in the camp is also conditional on clean test results for syphilis and HIV.
The sect founder denied allegations of criminal activity in the past, calling them “fabricated facts”.
