India, March 29 -- In the 1990s, when Prince Charles visited India, he had expressed a desire to visit Sathya Sai Baba, he was quietly dissuaded by the British Embassy in New Delhi. Sathya Sai Baba was one of India's best known self-styled spiritual leaders, known for his ability to materialise objects out of thin air, or so his devotees believed. Sathya Sai Baba's following spanned continents, his followers including artists, business leaders, and political figures and even some heads of state. Then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao was a patron. Following a controversy, then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, chief justices PN Bhagwati and Ranganath Misra, and members of parliament said they were "deeply pained and anguished by the wild, reckless and concocted allegations" against Sathya Sai Baba in December 2001. At one point in the mid-2000s, nearly half the Maharashtra ministers in the Congress-NCP government were followers of Sathya Sai Baba. The spiritual leader, who ran a network of charitable institutions, was estimated to be worth USD9 billion. It was only after his death in 2011 that allegations of sexual abuse by young men and boys surfaced. In January 2002, a Danish government-produced documentary broadcast interviews with Alaya Rahm, a former Sathya Sai Baba devotee, who alleged sexual abuse. In 2004, the BBC documentary revisited these accusations....