Patna: Five boxful of documents on the life and work of spiritual guru-cum-revolutionary peasant leader Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (1889-1950), which were surreptitiously taken away by former Virginia University professor Walter Hauser, 91, in the late 1950s and early 1960s to the United States were returned to Shri Sitaram Ashram here on Sunday.

The documents weighing around 200kg were handed over at an event held at AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies (ANISS) in Patna in the presence deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi and Union minister Ram Kripal Yadav.

Speaking on the occasion as the chief guest, Sushil Modi expressed happiness over the return of the documents and said the state government will provide support in the construction of Sahajanand Memorial and Research Centre. He said a life-size statue of him was going to be installed in Ara.

Doctor Satyajit Kumar Singh and independent researcher Kailash Chandra Jha, due to whose efforts the documents came back, as well as Wendy Singer, professor of history and South Asian Studies at Kenyon College and William R. Pinch, professor of Indian History at Wesleyan University in US were witness to the occasion. Pinch has been a student of Hauser.

"This is a happy ending of something that happened over half a century ago. Hauser first came to Swami Sahajanand's Sitaram Ashram in Bihta (around 35km west of Patna) in 1957 while researching. He saw everything in pitiable condition and continued visiting the ashram. The number of important documents lying there kept decreasing after his every visit," Kailash said.

A controversy erupted on the disappearance of the documents and Hauser was accused of being a CIA agent and the Bihar government said in the state legislature that the documents would be brought back. However, nothing happened over the years and it took much effort and pursuance by Satyajit and Kailash, which resulted in Hauser realising that the time has come to handover the documents to able hands.