The pre-trial detention of Gregorian Bivolara, the guru of the international yoga movement accused of being part of a sect that organizes sexual violence, ends on Friday, and the leader and 14 others are due to appear before investigative judges in Paris to face formal charges, AFP reports. .

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened a judicial investigation into several crimes, including kidnapping by an organized group, a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison, rape and human trafficking by an organized gang, and the use of vulnerable people by members of a sect.

A court source said that 15 of the 41 people arrested on Tuesday will appear before an investigating judge on Friday.

The central figure of the sect is Grigorian Bivolaru. Aged 71, he holds Romanian and Swedish citizenships, has a unkempt appearance, wears large glasses and is the founder of the Movement for Spiritual Integration of the Absolute (MISA), renamed Atman when he moved outside of Romania.

The movement presents itself as focused on the practice of tantra yoga, but has been accused of harboring a sect that practices widespread sexual violence.

Together with Gregorian Bivolaru, very famous in Romania and who in 1970 founded the first yoga school in the then communist country, people suspected of being “important leaders” of this sect, which has several hundred followers in France, were arrested. a source close to the investigation writes AFP.

Simultaneously with the arrests, 26 women were “removed from the sect”, where “they were kept in conditions of overcrowding and terrible hygiene”, the source in the court emphasized. Overall, according to this source, “numerous women of various nationalities claim to have been victims.”

The investigation was triggered by a July 2022 report by Miviludes (Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and Combating Religious Deviations), which was informed by the Ligue des droits de l’Homme (League of Human Rights) about 12 testimonies from former members of the Mass.

Then the prosecutor’s office of Paris began a judicial investigation into various crimes. The founder of the Movement for Spiritual Integration in the Absolute (MISA), Gregorian Bivolaru, was arrested on Tuesday in France along with 40 other people suspected of having ties to an international organization that would commit rape, kidnapping or human trafficking under the pretext of practicing yoga.

• Read also The Tantric Octopus Bivolaru stretches from India to the UK with a stop in Switzerland. “He brought a 16-year-old Hungarian girl to his room”