On September 6, a team from Bhagalpur's Shivnarayanpur police station rushed 175 km to Araria in search of a mahant (seer). On arrival, they found the holy man, Swami Aghyanand, alias Mantu Baba, 45, had shaved off his moustache and beard. But the disguise was not good enough. His mobile phone gave the seer away.Now in judicial custody in Bhagalpur jail, Mantu Baba is accused of involvement in the gangrape of two of his disciples, two sisters in their late 20s, at the Rampur mutt (Hindu monastery) in Bhagalpur.Mantu Baba was the junior associate of mahant Rajeswaranand, 42, who founded the mutt in 2006. It was Rajeswaranand who had also convinced the father of the two victims to let them work at the mutt. A retired school teacher in Katihar district, the father was so "impressed" by Rajeswaranand when he heard him at a satsang (spiritual discourse meet) in April 2010 that he agreed to send his daughters.Soon, the mahant started sexually exploiting the younger sister having promised to marry her.Though the affair was kept under wraps, Mantu knew of it and desired similar relations with the sisters as well. "When Rajeswaranand left for Haridwar in August on a funds drive, Mantu tried to persuade the sisters into a relationship with him. When they refused, Mantu called in five accomplices and gang-raped the sisters on the night of August 26," says Nirmal Kumar, officer-in-charge of Shivnarayanpur police station who arrested Mantu Baba."It was a planned crime," the officer added. Apparently tipped about the rape and the subsequent police probe, Rajeswaranand, the founder, has stayed away from the mutt, ironically called Sanyas Ashram (house of celibates) in Rampur village, 40 km from Bhagalpur, the district headquarters. The police have now sealed the mutt premises.The police probe has opened a can of worms. Unlike other mutts of Bihar that are built on donated land, Rajeswaranand had set up his hermitage by buying the plot. Both Rajeswaranand and Aghyanand were earlier junior members of another mutt from where, it is speculated, the former had got hold of the money he used to buy the plot in 2006. By 2008, he had attracted enough donations to build a four-room concrete structure. This reporter noticed names of some donors on iron bars of the mutt's windows.The Rampur rape case is not a one-off incident of Bihar's holy men and their involvment in sex crimes. In the past three months alone, three cases (including the Bhagalpur one) of rapes involving mahants have surfaced in Bihar.On August 28, Samastipur police arrested Jay Prakash Das alias Nagaji Baba, mahant of the Raipur mutt, for sexually exploiting a 17-year-old beauty parlour worker from Gujarat. The girl, seeking to fulfil personal wishes, had approached him during his visit to Ahmedabad. Then in July, Sitamarhi police lodged a rape case against Ram Sundar Das, the mahant of Bhatolia mutt, and his relatives, for raping a 14-year-old girl.Das tried to compensate the victim's family by making his relative, Ram Mohan, marry the teenager. When the girl's parents lodged an fir, Das and his relatives went into hiding before the police could act.Bihar has more than 4,500 mutts, mostly run by self-proclaimed mahants. "A majority of these mutts were established nearly two centuries ago on properties donated by childless couples or landed gentry to spiritual seers. The donors also left large land holdings at their disposal, in the hope that this will sustain the mutts. The spiritual leaders, with no family life of their own, were expected to worship and provide guidance to Hindu society.""Over the years, many charlatans have taken over these mutts. Worse still, many of the mahants have criminal antecedents," says Kishore Kunal, administrator of the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts (BSBRT).The mutts are a world in themselves. Away from public eye and scrutiny, mahants and their disciples have been found to illegally sell mutt property, hire killers to settle personal scores, besides sexually exploiting women. Though BSBRT has removed a number of mahants for "misconduct", many others miscreants roam free.In August 2011, a young girl was raped and murdered at a Nawada mutt. In December 2009, mahant Prem Shankar Bharti and his disciple Poonam made an abortive bid to "capture" the famous Ajgaivinath Shiva temple at Sultanganj in Bhagalpur. Earlier, in 2007, the two had locked themselves in the temple, following which Kunal, on behalf of BSBRT, had ordered his removal."Today, half the mahants are married and pass on mutt property rights to their kin," Kunal, a former IPS officer, told India Today. Though BSBRT desists from denouncing marriages of mahants, the Trust officials concede this fans-internecine rivalry because the mahants pass on the gaddi -- the seat of power -- to their offspring. Many mahants have also been found to usurp plots or mutt funds. Mahants are said to be fighting more than 1,000 civil suits over property in Bihar.Land-holdings are the biggest reason for bitter rivalries in mutts. In October 2011, mahant Tarun Das of Udasin mutt in Patna was killed in the city's Hanuman Temple. The Kabir mutt in Fatuha, Patna district -- which owns land and property worth more than Rs 100 crore -- has witnessed the killing of six people, including Rameshwar Das, the mahant, in 2009. In March 2010, Akhileshwaranand Puri, a mahant of Deokund mutt in Aurangabad, was gunned down.The Bihar mutt murders may have inspired monks in other states as well. In June 2012, the Gujarat Police arrested three junior monks, Bhavesh Vyas, Balak Das and Kamal Nayan, for the murder of Ashutosh Das, mahant of Tejanand Ashram in Sachin area on May 31. Vyas, who hails from Bihar, had hired a killer, Keshav, to eliminate the mahant, who owned property worth crores and headed three temples and ashrams in Surat.The most shocking contract killing by a mahant, though, took place in Gopalganj, Bihar, in April 1981, when District Magistrate MPN Sharma was killed in a bomb attack after he ordered dismantling of Sant Gyaneshwar's ashram. Paramhans Yadav, the killer, was hanged in 1988. The seer, himself an accused in 16 cases, was killed in Allahabad in February 2006.BSBRT has been trying to rein in many mahants. It has taken over control of more than 1,000 temples in the last six years, despite stiff resistance from private trusts that operate them. These include Garibnath Temple in Muzaffarpur and Devi Temple in Gopalganj's Thawe -- each of which accrues over Rs 1 crore in offerings a year, besides owning a lot of land.BSBRT has also successfully challenged the private ownership of various mutts, and taken over their control for accepting public donations. In September 2012, it sacked two mahants -- Viswanath Giri, 65, and Ramanand Giri, 38, of Vishnupur Saraiyya mutt, Muzaffarpur -- for selling the mutt's property. But this is only half the battle won.