Professor Laxmidhar Behera, Director of IIT Mandi, claimed that he drove out “evil spirits” from his friend’s house and family by chanting holy mantras in 1993.

Prof Laxmidhar Behera | Image: iitk.ac.in 

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Professor Laxmidhar Behera, Director of IIT Mandi, said that “ghosts exists”
  • In a video, he claimed that he went to Chennai in 1993 to drive out “evil spirits” from his friend’s house and family
  • He said that he chanted holy mantras in his apparent act of exorcism

A video of the newly appointed Director of IIT Mandi, Professor Laxmidhar Behera, talking about his apparent act of exorcism to get rid of “evil spirits” from his friend’s house by chanting holy mantras has surfaced online.

In the five-minute video, Behera recalled the 1993 incident when he travelled to Chennai to help a friend who was in distress as his “family was affected by ghosts”.

In the five-minute video clip, Behera recalls an incident from 1993 where he travelled to Chennai to help a friend whose “family was affected by ghosts”. He then goes on to say that he wanted to help his friend to “demonstrate the potency of the holy name” as he had started “practising the thoughts and wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita” along with chanting the ‘Hare Rama Hare Krishna’ mantra.

Giving a blow-by-blow account of the incident, Behera says, “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.”

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”.

The professor said that he had started “practising the thoughts and wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita” along with chanting the ‘Hare Rama Hare Krishna’ mantra. He said 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 added that the mother and wife of the friend were later “possessed by the evil spirit’. It took them around “45 minutes to an hour” of loud chanting to ward off the “evil spirit”, he said.

The video was posted seven months ago on a YouTube channel named “Learn Gita Live Gita”. The tagline of the channel is “Project by IITIANS who live Gita.” 

Behera told IE, “I narrated what I said. Ghosts exist, yes.”

Behera is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He has done PhD from IIT Delhi and his areas of speciality are robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

The video was posted on his YouTube channel titled “Learn Gita Live Gita” seven months ago. Soon after the controversy emerged, the video’s setting was changed from public to private.

Behera was appointed to IIT Mandi after a panel comprising IIT Hyderabad chairman B.V.R Mohan Reddy, Government of India’s principal scientific adviser K. Vijay Raghavan, IIT Mandi chairman Prem Vrat, Standing Committee for IIT Council chairman K. Radhakrishnan, then Higher Education secretary Amit Khare and education minister Pradhan selected him.