The Sathya Sai Baba lookalike, alleged avatar and copyist of Sai Baba's behaviour in numerous ways - 'materialiser' of vibuthi, trinkets and lingams has been defended by many of his former followers as innocent of the charges. All manner of criticism of the High Court judgement, the double life sentence for rape of 5 young women and murder of one man, and the international DNA expert's analysis of the physical evidence (from an aborted foetus) has been made by these 'true believers'. However, the entire process has been re-examined by the Supreme Court of India and found to be valid throughout and the sentencing fully justified.
I had a friend who believed in Premananda's innocence and had his darshan from behind the prison bars.
I had signed a petition for the Premananda's release from prison, because I believed in his innocence, based on the following. First of all, I believed that he could do miracles, based on stories that I had heard. Secondly, I believed that somebody who could do miracles could not be a sinner, as described in M.'s (Mahendranath Gupta's) Gospel of Ramakrishna which I then believed to be authentic. Apart from that I was deeply touched and impressed by some of his discourses.
Now I do not know what to believe anymore and prefer confusion above false certainties.
Followers and proponents tend to see his verdict as a conspiracy.
I do not know why both SSB and Premananda had and have so many Dutch followers, but it may have to do with three things 1. the Netherlands have always been open and tolerant to foreign influences and 2. traditional religion is not very strong here. This is in correspondence with empirical research that says that alternative research is stronger in case of weakness of traditional religion. The correlation has been found both in the Netherlands and in the USA (I think by Starks and Bainbridge, please check Wikipedia, entry religious conversion)
