In a 5- minute YouTube video clip, Behera recounts how he had travelled to Chennai in 1993 to help a friend who was in distress as his family was ‘affected by ghosts.’
New Delhi: Newly-appointed IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Mandi director, Laxmidhar Behera, has sparked controversy after a video of his apparent exorcism to rid his friend’s home and parents of “evil spirits” by chanting holy mantras surfaced online, Indian Express reported. The video uploaded on a YouTube channel called ‘Learn Gita Live Gita’, which was later made private, and is not available for public view.
In a 5- minute YouTube video clip, Behera recounts how he had travelled to Chennai in 1993 to help a friend who was in distress as his family was ‘affected by ghosts.’ He said that he had started performing the thoughts and wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita as well as chanting “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna.” He added that he had decided to help his friend to “demonstrate the potency of the holy name”, The Indian Express reported.
“So I took two of my friends and reached at 7 pm. He was in a research scholar apartment. After 10-15 minutes of loud chanting, we suddenly saw his father, who was a very short… person, absolutely old, barely able to walk, and suddenly his hand and leg was… he was creating such a ghastly dance and his head is almost touching the roof. You could feel that he is being completely devoured by the evil spirit,” Behera said in the video.
He then goes on to say that the mother and wife of the friend in question were “possessed by the evil spirit”, adding that it took them about 45 minutes to one hour of “loud chanting to ward off the evil spirit”.
When asked about his act of exorcism, Behera told Indian Express, “I narrated what I said. Ghosts exist, yes.” He also added that “modern science cannot explain a lot of occurrences or events”.
Behera, who earlier served at IIT Kanpur, was appointed to Mandi IIT on Thursday, January 13. As per the IIT Kanpur website, he is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and his areas of expertise are robotics and artificial intelligence. He holds a PhD from IIT Delhi and a post-doctoral degree from German National Center for Information Technology.
