Motivational speaker Mahavishnu, who drew widespread criticism for his speech at a school blaming “past life sins” for poverty and verbally abusing a teacher with disabilities, has been arrested by the Chennai police. He was arrested at the airport upon his landing from Australia on Saturday, September 7 and was produced before the court which remanded him to judicial custody.  

According to reports, Mahavishnu has been booked under sections 192 [provocation with intent to cause riots], 196 (1) (a) [promoting enmity], 352 [insult], and 353 (2) [spreading false information] of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Section 92 of the Disabilities Act, 2016.

Mahavishnu, who runs the organisation Paramporul Foundation, had delivered a speech to the students of The Saidapet High School and Ashok Nagar Girls' High School in Chennai on September 5 to commemorate Teachers Day. He had claimed that people are born poor or with disorders because of "what they did in their past lives" and that "you have been given things in this life based on what you did in your past lives." Mahavishnu also went on to blame the British for allegedly "destroying" the Gurukulam system, a system that essentially permitted education on the basis of caste and gender.

Mahavishnu also claimed that there had been shlokas that could cause a rain of fire, cure ailments and even enable a person to fly. “All these were written as scriptures by our ancestors but the British erased them,” he said at his speech. 

When a teacher with disabilities, Shankar, protested against Mahvishnu’s unscientific and regressive claims, the speaker resorted to verbally abusing and humiliating him. 

After clips of Mahavishnu’s speech went viral, netizens, activists and politicians alike were furious at his statements and at his behaviour with the teacher. Many have slammed the Tamil Nadu government for allowing such an incident to take place in government schools and questioned the DMK’s secularist stance.