Chennai Advent Church Bishop S.D. David was arrested for cheating and defrauding ₹ 3.85 crore from a Trichy businessman.
The Advent Church functions all across Tamil Nadu and own and operates numerous schools and churches to its name.
SD David who is the Bishop of the Chennai district has 100 churches and 50 schools operating under him. He is also closely associated with evangelist Mohan C. Lazarus.
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Image is from Google. It is an invitation for the opening of a new Advent Christian Church in Sembakkam, Chennai & you can see Bishop Rt. Rev. S.D. David on the right (the person wearing glasses with the pink attire)
Get an idea of the scale herehttps://t.co/n44zjgFsbu pic.twitter.com/Jadpgcl4uV— UniversalReligiousFreeDoom (@by2kaafi) September 4, 2020
He is also a trustee of Adventist schools in Thiruporur and Chitlapakkam regions.
The Advent Church has its own piece of land in Velachery which costs ₹ 50 crore. This was appropriated by SD David and had tried to sell it to Sathyamoorthy, a native of Trichy. Sathyamoorthy had agreed to buy the land for ₹26 crores to build a school and had paid ₹3.85 crores as advance in various instalments.
Bishop SD David instead of putting the money in the Church’s account took the money to himself and did not transfer the land to Sathyamoorthy as agreed. Meanwhile, Sathyamoorthy had lodged a complaint with the Trichy Municipal Central Crime Branch Police regarding the fraud of ₹ 3.85 crore. A case against this matter is pending at the Madras High Court
Following this, the Trichy city police arrested SD David at his house in Velachery in Chennai and has taken him to Trichy.
The police have informed that the Bishop has been arrested for defrauding Sathyamoorthy of ₹3.85 crores. They are also on the lookout for Church Secretary Panneer Selvam, Treasurer Stephenson and Broker Nellai Samuel who were complicit in the fraud.
Bishop SD David was put in jail after testing him for COVID19. Though David’s term as Bishop ended in March this year he is now serving an extension.
More details on Advent Church
The American Advent Mission located at 162, Gandhi Street, Velachery, Chennai is an FCRA NGO. According to the annual returns filed for the year 2017-18, the American Advent Mission has received ₹2987324.46 directly from a foreign source. ₹194,709.64 has been received from Advent Christian Mission, New Zealand and ₹279,264.82 from Advent Christian General Conference. In 2016-17, they had received more than ₹570,320.73 from the same Advent Christian General Conference and had a total foreign contribution of more than ₹14 lakhs. They haven’t filed their annual returns for the year 2018-19.
Although the FCRA funds are not that much, there has been much turbulence within the Advent Church itself. In 2016, the High Court had to intervene to settle a dispute between the members of the Church regarding the election of its President as one of the President’s was alleged to have indulged in malpractice.