Laxmidhar Behera

A statement by the newly-appointed IIT Mandi director Laxmidhar Behera claiming that ghosts exists and that he has gotten ‘rid of evil spirits’ through chants has sparked a controversy.

In a five minute YouTube video clip, which has now been made private, 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.’ In the video, he is heard saying that he had started ‘practising the thoughts and wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita’ along with chanting the Hare Rama Hare Krishna? mantra and had decided to help his friend to ‘demonstrate the potency of the holy name.’

Recalling the incident, Behera added in the clip: “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 washe 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 also claimed 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.’

When The Indian Express asked Behera about the video, he said, “I narrated what I said. Ghosts exist, yes.” while adding that modern science cannot explain a lot of occurrences or events.

As per reports, Behera was previously a professor at IIT Kanpur in the Department of Electrical Engineering. His specialisations include robotics and artificial intelligence. He has completed 30 projects, has 307 publications, and 2,612 citations. He was earlier heading the Intelligent Systems and Control Laboratory at IIT Kanpur. He has been associated with IIT Kanpur since 2001, before which he was associated with BITS-Pilani and REC-Rourkela.