The Bombay high court on Friday reprimanded the Pune police for its casual approach in investigating the alleged forgery of spiritual guru Chandra Mohan Jain aka Osho Rajneesh’s will. The court came down heavily on the prosecution as there was no progress in investigation and no senior police officer was present in the court to inform it about the future course of the investigation.

Meanwhile the Enforcement Directorate (ED) informed the court that it has started investigation into complaints of alleged fraud and misappropriation of funds by the Osho Rajneesh Trust.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Yogesh Thakkar, who claims to be a follower of Osho Rajneesh since 1979. He has alleged that the trustees of Osho International Foundation forged Osho’s signature in his will and has sought a CBI investigation into the matter.

The division bench of Justice Naresh Patil and Justice Prakash Naik expressed its displeasure when the public prosecutor informed them that the police has written to the Centre seeking permission to issue Letters Rogatory to foreign countries seeking certain documents pertaining to the case.

Letters rogatory or a letter of request is a formal request from a court to a foreign court for some type of judicial assistance.

However, when the bench asked her what would the police do if the Central government allows its request to issue LR, the police officer present in the court did not give a satisfactory reply.

When the judges sought to know about the report of handwriting expert, they were informed that the state’s assistant handwriting expert had expressed his inability to give an opinion based on the photocopy of the will. The public prosecutor informed the bench that as per the probe done so far, the original copy of the will had been missing for the past few years.