India is a spiritual country. But, there are parts of our country where the theism is taking a new turn. A Russian woman has recently fallen to the prey of this, after divorcing her husband she joined a cult group named ‘Sathya Sai Baba Cult’ and taken up a starvation challenge set up by her leader. Interior designer Elena Smorodinova, 35, from Siberia did this as she is passing through a rough phase after divorce.
Her relatives and friends say that after joining the cult two years ago, Elena moved away from all her acquaintances. Back then, Elena used to be an open and cheerful person but she got completely changed after joining the cult. The group was led by former fashion designer and psychologist Elena Baykova, also known as Lola, who claims to be a representative of the guru Sathya Sai Baba, who died in 2011.
One of Smorodinova’s friends says that Lola challenged Elena to take long fasts and forbade him to keep in touch with his friends. Elena managed to survive several of Lola’s fasting challenges. The last and fatal challenge that Elena was given was to run out of food for three weeks and without water for the first two weeks of that.
According to reports, Elena told Lola that she wanted to quit but died of dehydration and malnutrition.
His friends are convinced that Lola deliberately did such cruel tasks for her friend in order to harm her. They suspect that she was jealous of Elena and her boyfriend, who liked to send text messages despite the ban on communications.
Since the death, Lola has fled, since she can face charges of influencing a person to commit suicide. There was no comment from anyone in the cult of Sai Baba, and it is not known if it is still working.