The main accused, Appu alias Krishnasamy, was said to have been arrested several days ago at Puthur in Andhra Pradesh, police said.

He was supposed to be taken to Hyderabad from Puthur Friday, and would be brought to Chennai before being taken to Kanchipuram, where the murder took place.

Appu is said to be the leader of the criminal gang that allegedly murdered temple official A. Sankararaman in Kanchiuram on Nov 3 at the behest of the Shankaracharya.

For the first time, all Dravidian parties got together Friday to defend Congress president Sonia Gandhi and condemn pro-Hindutva groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) for "dragging" her name into the Shankaracharya arrest.

The pontiff was arrested Nov 11 from Mehboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh on charges of plotting and abetting the murder and has been held in Vellore jail since then.

The case is being investigated by a special police team headed by Kanchipuram's Superintendent of Police K. Premkumar. All the 22 people on the police's list of suspects and the pontiff are being interrogated by the team here.

Meanwhile, a sessions court Friday adjourned to Dec 6 the bail plea of seven of the accused in the Sankararaman murder case. Jayendra Saraswathi's bail plea too is pending before the Madras High Court.

Among the main accused are alleged contract killers Kathiravan and Chinna, and Ravi Subramaniam, a real estate contractor.

Police said with the arrest of Appu, they now had all the leads required to prove the case against the Shankaracharya and his associates.

A principal sessions court in Chennai Friday adjourned to Monday the hearing on the bail application filed by the pontiff in a separate case of assault, in which a Chennai-based detractor of the seer named Radhakrishnan was attacked and seriously injured two years ago.

The Shankaracharya has been implicated and arrested in this case and police claimed the same gang led by Appu and Kathriavan had also attacked Radhakrishnan and two others.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh police said they wanted to arrest a woman named Usha, implicated by the prosecution in the murder case.

Usha was said to be linked with the Sankaracharya and a conduit for allegedly transferring funds to the killers.

Usha presented herself before the police two days ago and denied the charges, saying she was a cancer patient.

Andhra Pradesh Police said they wanted to arrest Usha in connection with cheating a bank of Rs.3 million in 1997. On Friday, during the third day of questioning, Usha insisted before police that she had not cheated any bank.

Meanwhile, the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance Friday accused the BJP and its allied parties of trying to create rift among people over the arrest of Jayendra Saraswathi.

In a resolution adopted at a meeting of the alliance here, leaders of the DMK, Congress, PMK, MDMK, Communist Part of India-Marxist, Communist Party of India and Indian Union Muslim League condemned the opposition for dragging Congress president Sonia Gandhi's name into the Kanchi case.

They said the BJP was "unnecessarily indulging in mischievous propaganda to get political mileage from the arrest".

PMK leader S. Ramadoss said: "The complexities of the case are such that it was time for the Supreme Court to look into the Shankaracharya's cases."

--Indo-Asian News Service