Starting out in a hut in Motera on the banks of the Sabarmati, Asaram's consisting of 400 minor and major ashrams spread across multiple Indian states and abroad
Asaram Bapu has been in the headlines for the wrong reasons for years now, both before and after his arrest in September 2013. The latest amongst these incidents connected to the godman is the death of a third witness in criminal cases against him – Kripal Singh, who was shot by two motorcycle-borne assailants in Puwayan in the Shajahanpur district of Uttar Pradesh.
Even by the murky standards of India’s self-styled spiritual gurus, the allegations whirling around the 74-year-old Asaram are exceptional: suspected black magic and human sacrifice; the deaths of four young male students of the residential schools in his ashrams, of which the bodies of two were found severely burned and mutilated, their limbs and internal organs missing; sexual assault of a minor girl under the pretext of ‘exorcism’; allegations of repeated rape and illegal confinement of two sisters, supposedly with the complicity of the godman’s son, the latter also having been accused of raping the victims; attacks in four states against nine witnesses in criminal cases against the godman, leading to the death of three, of which one was a former personal aide of the guru and another his former cook; threats and intimidation of complainants, witnesses and their families, apart from judges and investigating officers in multiple states.
These do not include other alleged crimes that seem to be associated with Asaram – the suspicious deaths of at least two ashram employees, rumours of widespread sexual exploitation of female devotees, nearly a dozen cases of land encroachment across states, and pervasive financial irregularity. All of it apparently carried out brazenly thanks to the blessings of a higher power – the political elite in his home state and elsewhere.
Who is Asaram Bapu?
Born Asumal Sirumalani in pre-Independence Sindh in 1941, Asaram moved along with his family to Ahmedabad following Partition. The young man who once drove a tanga in Ajmer carrying pilgrims to the Dargah, and spent many years wandering pilgrimage spots, was eventually taken into a religious order in 1964, thus acquiring the name he is now known by.
Starting out in a hut in Motera on the banks of the Sabarmati in the early 1970s, Asaram’s religious empire grew to become one of the largest in the country, today consisting of 400 minor and major ashrams spread across multiple Indian states and abroad, and attracting thousands of devoted followers.
Not surprisingly, political leaders across parties have at one point or the other sought the guru’s blessings, if not been outright followers; the list includes former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Nitin Gadkari, Chief Ministers Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Raman Singh and Prem Kumar Dhumal, all from the BJP, as well as Digvijaya Singh, Kamal Nath and Motilal Vora of the Congress. Narendra Modi had appeared on stage with Asaram on several occasions in his Gujarat days, although after the allegations surfaced, he warned other BJP leaders against defending the godman.
There is no doubt that Asaram commanded great loyalty. One well-known devotee, D.G. Vanzara, the jailed ‘encounter specialist’ of the Gujarat police, is said to have insisted on drinking milk only if it was brought from the godman’s Motera ashram. According to some reports, Vanzara’s bitter missive from prison accusing the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of using and then abandoning him was said to have been prompted by the news of his spiritual guru’s arrest. “My god (Modi) could not save my guru (Asaram). How will he save me?” Vanzara had written in his September 2013 letter.
The Jodhpur rape case
In August, 2013 the Delhi police filed a case against Asaram on a complaint made by a 16-year-old girl, who alleged that the religious godman sexually assaulted her in his Jodhpur ashram. In her complaint, the girl, who hails from Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, said that she was asked to perform oral sex and was also touched inappropriately during what was supposed to be a ceremony to cure her of evil spirits. The incident took place on 15th August, 2013.
On August 31, 2013 Asaram Bapu was arrested and flown to Jodhpur, where he was imprisoned. Investigators also alleged that Asaram video-recorded his sexual acts with several women so as to blackmail them into granting him further sexual favours. He was booked under Sections 342, 376, 506 and 509 of the IPC, as well as under Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) and sections 23 and 26 of the Juvenile Justice Act.
Asaram has remained in jail since then, his bail pleas having been rejected six times, despite having been represented by two of the most prominent lawyer-politicians in the country, Subramanian Swamy and Ram Jethmalani. One of the arguments made by Jethmalani in court stretched to the absurd; for instance, that the victim had a “chronic disease which draws a woman to a man”.
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