New Delhi: Former prime ministers, presidents, actors and politicians – the fan following of god man Sathya Sai runs into several columns of the world's who's who.
The man who claims to have performed several miracles including bringing two dead men back to life, counts top businessmen and even the country's cricketers among his followers.
In 1968, when Sathya Sai made his first and only trip overseas to Uganda he met with dictator Idi Amin. But the late military leader and President of Uganda was one of a long list of celebrities who sought audience with him everyday, mostly at his native Andhra village of Puttaparthi where he lived.
In a letter made public in December 2001, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former Chief Justice of Supreme Court PN Bhagawati, former former chairperson of Rajya Sabha Najma Heptullah and former Union Minister Shivraj Patil expressed "pain and anguish" at alleged attempts by the media to tarnish Sathya Sai's image.
The allegations by the media followed criticisms by rationalists of the godman's claims of divinity and his refusal to undergo scientific scrutiny of his materializing inanimate objects out of thin air.
Among his noted followers are actor Amitabh Bachchan, cricketers Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble, politicians Shivraj Patil, Ashok Chavan, S M Krishna, M K Stalin and Chandrababu Naidu.
In 2001, when the digital radio network Radio Sai Global Harmony was launched through the World Space Organization, Dr Michael Oleinikof Nobel, a distant relative to Alfred Nobel, said it would spread Sathya Sai's message of global harmony. He was a patron of the radio network.
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