41 people arrested in France during a vast search, including their guru Gregorian Bivolaru

A vast raid against a yoga sect was organized by the police on Tuesday.

A vast sweep of the net. 41 people suspected of being linked to an international sect accused of numerous abuses under the guise of practicing yoga were arrested in France on Tuesday, November 28, franceinfo learned from judicial sources, confirming information from the newspaper Release.

Among those arrested is Gregorian Bivolaru, the Romanian guru and founder of this controversial international yoga movement, this source said. The dragnet required the mobilization of 175 police officers in Paris, Seine-et-Marne, Val de Marne, and Alpes-Maritimes. At the time of the guru’s arrest, 26 women were taken from the house where he was staying. They were held “in conditions of cramped conditions and deplorable hygiene”.

A conditioning to accept sexual relations

According to this judicial source, contacted by franceinfo, the first elements reveal that this international sect was focused in particular around tantra yoga (Editor’s note: the awakening of spirituality via sexuality), and that this teaching was intended to condition the victims to accept sexual relations via mental manipulation techniques aimed at removing from victims any notion of consent in the context of sexual relations. The Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP) had notably received complaints from three women victims of the organization who declared that they had been confined in a pavilion and forced into certain sexual practices.

According to the same source, the courses led by Gregorian Bivolaru aimed to get people to participate in sexual and/or physical activities. Several participants denounced having been forced to pay their “stay” by engaging in sex video chats for women, and for men through manual labor.

Many women are already questioning Gregorian Bivolaru

At the end of July 2022, Miviludes, the interministerial mission for vigilance and the fight against sectarian abuses, sent a report to the Paris prosecutor’s office after being informed by the Human Rights League of twelve reports. They came from former members of the Misa movement, “Movement for Spiritual Integration towards the Absolute” (Misa), an international group founded at the beginning of 1990 in Romania by Gregorian Bivolaru, and ancestor of the current sect. Many women of different nationalities declared that they had been victims of the actions of the MISA organization and its leader Gregorian Bivolaru.

A judicial investigation was opened by the Paris public prosecutor’s office on July 10, 2023 for “abuse of weakness in an organized gang by a member of a sect”, “organized gang kidnapping”, “rape” and “trafficking in human beings in an organized gang “.