CNN News18 pulls down a report on Sadhguru buying a superbike after Ducati retracts

Among the current crop of Babas, Sadhguru Jaggi is perhaps most relatable to People Like Us. Some would call him the Ram Rahim of Defence Colony, minus the sleaze and crime, of course. So, him buying a second Ducati shouldn’t be a cause of outrage. But such are the times. Second one?!? How dare he. No sooner had CNN News18 put up a report of Jaggi-ji buying the Ducati Multistrada 1260 Pikes Peak Edition, Twitter people made comments like ‘oh look at this Monk buying a bike instead of selling a Ferrari’. Oh, look, Rs 21 lakh ki superbike! What about not wanting any material wealth, huh?!?

And then the report disappeared causing us to put on our conspiracy theorist hats on.

Did Babaji call Mota Bhai? Was he upset with all the Twitter shaming by socialist-types? Does he not want people to know? If the world knows about the first superbike, why should the second one be a secret?

CNN News18 was superfast with removing all traces of the report from the vast Internets, so we couldn’t look at the cache to figure what the fuss was all about. But reports on other websites like Yahoo finance, state that the bike purportedly purchased by Sadhguru would be available in limited units only. The report also states that in comparison to the regular 1260, the Pikes Peak is pricier by Rs. 5.43 lakh in the domestic market.

We sent a questionnaire to CNN News18 and were informed that the article was pulled down after Ducati informed them that they are retracting their original post.

Meanwhile, a little birdie told us that the source of these news reports was Ducati’s Instagram page. And apparently, the post was deleted which may have lead to the deletion of news reports that relied on the post.

Some other birdies told us that the whole thing was a giant mistake. Jaggi-ji never bought the bike, he only took it out for a test drive. We reached out to a representative of Isha foundation and it was confirmed that Jaggi-Ji never bought the offending Ducati in question. So, this was just a case of fake news and fake outrage. But, seriously, even if he had bought it, one shouldn’t grudge the Baba his bike. There has to be some upside to bearing the burden of weighty issues like whether women should enter Sabarimala or not. 

Update: Ducati has a new Instagram story.

Update: The story has been updated with CNN News18‘s response.