Jayendra Saraswati after being released from jail. (PTI)

Vellore, Jan. 11: A smiling Jayendra Saraswati walked to ?conditional freedom? this afternoon after 61 days in jail but not before his lawyers raced to pre-empt Tamil Nadu police from arresting the Kanchi mutt pontiff in another case.

The release came on a day chief minister Jayalalithaa defended last night?s arrest of Vijayendra Saraswati, an accused in the same murder case as the senior acharya. In a reply to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh?s letter last week, she dismissed fears that with Jayendra Saraswati also told to stay away, the junior acharya?s arrest would disrupt daily pujas in the mutt.

?It is not as if both the swamijis have not been away from the mutt at the same time in the past,? she said and pointed out that when Jayendra Saraswati was arrested, both he and his junior were in Andhra Pradesh.

Exactly two minutes after 4.30 pm ? when the inauspicious Rahu kalam had ended ? a tired but smiling Jayendra Saraswati ambled out of the large Vellore prison gate. Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, VHP chief Ashok Singhal, his lawyers and some devotees close to the mutt greeted him with a traditional welcome.

Dozens of tense devotees had been waiting outside since early morning. They had converged around the jail after word got around that a special investigation team was headed towards the prison to serve an arrest warrant on the seer in a case of alleged assault on a Vaishnavite temple priest, Thirukoshtiyur Madhavan, in August 2003.

So worried were the devotees that when the jail superintendent returned in his car after lunch around 2.30, they thought it was Kancheepuram SP Prem Kumar rushing in with another arrest warrant. A small group of women began reciting Sanskrit slokas even as others chanted ?Jaya Jaya Shankara, Hara Hara Shankara?.

While the devotees stood crestfallen, the acharya?s lawyers moved an anticipatory bail application before noon in the court of the principal sessions judge, Chennai, in the assault case. Once the matter came up for hearing, the police were told to act keeping in mind a high court circular that an arrest should not be effected when an anticipatory bail plea is pending.

A Kanchi mutt spokesman said the police had reportedly given an assurance to the court that they would not proceed with the assault case for now, which cleared the last hurdle in the acharya?s release.

As the seer stepped outside the prison gate, Singhal greeted him with a ?garland? while Sushma and a former Tamil Nadu IAS officer, Chandralekha, fell at his feet. Some others offered him a shawl.

Raja Vadyar, president of the All India Vedic Pundits Association, offered him prasad from 11 temples.

Sushma, who had come with state BJP leader S. Thirunavukkarasar, said her party would ?fight to the last? to restore the mutt?s glory. ?This is not an election issue or an election plank for us, but it is a very painful development.?

?(The) law is taking Jayalalithaa?s course,? she said, slamming the junior pontiff?s arrest as ?the height of persecution?.