A globe-trotting self-styled spiritual guru, Maha Vishnu, who faced controversy for justifying rebirth based on sins committed in previous lives during a lecture at a government school on Teacher’s Day, was detained upon his arrival at the Chennai airport on Saturday.

He was taken into custody upon returning from Australia and sent to an undisclosed location for questioning. The police action followed numerous complaints against him, including those lodged by associations of differently-abled persons. He is accused of preaching unscientific and fundamentalist views to impressionable school children and belittling the plight of the differently-abled.

Earlier on Friday, police in Tirupur conducted searches at his home in the town and at the premises of his NGO, ‘Paramporul Foundation’, in nearby Kolathupalayam. It was later found that he had left for Australia.

“If god is the embodiment of compassion, why are some born rich, some in absolute poverty, some with deformities and diseases, and some without homes? Some are born heroes while others are not… Why should these be? It is because your present life is given according to the sins committed in the previous birth,” Maha Vishnu told students at the Girls Higher Secondary School in Ashok Nagar. Though invited to deliver a talk on self-confidence, he digressed into supporting regressive and unscientific beliefs. He had earlier addressed the students of another government school at Saidapet in the city.

When a visually challenged teacher, Sankar, dared him not to preach superstitious beliefs, Maha Vishnu abused him, asking, “Are you more knowledgeable than the Chief Educational Officer (and other high officials who permitted the lecture?” As the clip of his speech and abuse of Sankar as well as his photographs with a few DMK ministers had gone viral online, it provoked huge public outrage with many political parties and activists demanding stern action.

In response to the controversy, the Education Department was forced into action, transferring the two headmasters and ordering a probe into the issue on Friday. School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi, who visited the Ashok Nagar School, assured that severe action would be taken against those responsible for inviting the speaker. “It will be a stern lesson for all across Tamil Nadu. I will not let the speaker go without consequences. He came to my place and abused my teacher,” he remarked.

Honouring Sankar, a Tamil teacher, for daring to confront the speaker, the minister said, “I am proud of him. It is Tamil that had questioned obscurantism. The Constitution requires us to promote scientific temper. Students need not take whatever is being said. Rather, they should rationally analyse and find out what is correct.”

Criticising the detention of Maha Vishnu, leader of the ultra-Tamil nationalist “Naam Tamilar Katchi” (We Tamils Party), Seeman lashed out at the police for treating him like a terrorist at the airport. “What is the need for the arrest?” he questioned, adding, “The headmasters have been made the scapegoats by transferring them. How could the speaker be invited without the knowledge of the officials? If so, it shows that the Education Department is dysfunctional,” he charged.