JODHPUR, India: An Indian guru with millions of followers was found guilty Wednesday of raping a teenage devotee on the pretext of ridding her of evil spirits, and sentenced to a life in prison.
The judgment was pronounced by Special Judge for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe cases, Madhu Sudan Sharma, inside the Jodhpur Central Jail, where Asaram Bapu is lodged.
Asaram Bapu, 77, who leads hundreds of ashrams in India and overseas, was convicted at a closed jailhouse court hearing in Jodhpur, in western Rajasthan state where hundreds of police stood guard Wednesday.
The judgment came amid tight security as the threat of violence by Asaram's followers loomed. The principal of the school where Asaram's victim studied also spoke of the pressure he faced from Asaram's followers to change the child's date of birth to help the godman evade punishment under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act."But society has a lot of faith in schools and it was my moral duty to live up to it and I fulfilled my responsibility," he added.
The white-bearded guru, who urges followers to live a pious life free of sexual desires, has always denied raping the then 16-year-old at an ashram in the city.
“He has been convicted for rape and sections of stringent child protection law and will get a minimum 10 years or life in prison,” said Utsav Bains, a lawyer for the family, who was informed of the verdict by colleagues at the closed prison hearing in Jodhpur.
The 77-year-old godman was convicted under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act and the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act. Two co-accused were also convicted in the case.
The police chargesheet against Asaram Bapu and four other co-accused Shiva, Shilpi, Sharad and Prakash was filed on November 6, 2013, under the Pocso Act, the Juvenile Justice Act and the IPC.
Sources said the court also convicted Shilpi (warden of Asaram's ashram) and Sharad, while Shiva and Prakash were acquitted in the case.
Asaram Bapu is facing trial in another sexual assault case in Gujarat.
The final arguments in the case were completed in the Jodhpur court on April 7, which reserved the order for Wednesday.
The hearing was closed to media and the prison surrounded by tight security.
Several Indian states were put on high alert and thousands of extra police deployed ahead of Asaram’s trial with authorities fearing riots if “Babuji” was found guilty.
Devotees of another self-styled Hindu guru, who was jailed in 2017 for 20 years for rape, went on a rampage that lasted days and left 38 dead.
Asaram still commands a huge following but his star power has faded following the rape charges and other controversies.
He is also accused of raping another devotee and involvement in the killing of two students at another of his Hindu retreats.
Asaram case Rape victim's father happy to get justice
The father of the teenager raped by Asaram expressed satisfaction over the Jodhpur court verdict convicting the self-styled godman and thanked the judiciary and the media for it. "I am happy to get justice," the rape victim's father said after Asaram's conviction by a Jodhpur court. "We had complete faith in the judiciary and are happy that we got justice," he told mediapersons soon after the court verdict.
"For the past four months, our family members had not been coming out (of our house). it is satisfying that the verdict has gone against him," he said. "We were living in constant terror, our business was adversely hit," he said. The Jodhpur court found 77-year-old Asaram guilty of raping a teenager five years ago. The teenager from Shahajanpur in Uttar Pradesh was studying at the self-styled godman's ashram at Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh. The victim had alleged that Asaram had called her to his ashram in Manai area near Jodhpur and raped her on the night of August 15, 2013. Ahead of the pronouncement of the judgement, the district administration had extended security to the victim's family.
The administration had also stepped up vigil at Asaram's ashram at Rudrapur, about two km away. Asaram was arrested in Indore and brought to Jodhpur on September 1, 2013. He is under judicial custody since September 2, 2013.
Who is Asaram Bapu?
- Asumal Harpalani was born in April 1941 in a village called Bernai in Sindh region in present-day Pakistan.
- His family migrated to Ahmadabad city in Gujarat after the partition of India.
- In the 1960s, he started practising spiritualism with different gurus - one of whom gave him the name Asaram.
- In 1972, he formed his first ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati river in Motera town of Gujarat.
- His influence spread to different parts of India and around the world in the following decades.
- According to his website, he has 40 million followers around the world.
- He also has properties worth millions of dollars across India. The police are also investigating him for corruption and forgery.
Controversial Indian gurus
Leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda, a socio-spiritual organization, Ram Rahim Singh has been accused of being involved in enforcing the castration of hundreds of followers, Singh has repeatedly denied involvement. The Flamboyant chief of Dera Sacha Sauda sect was found guilty of raping two woman disciples.
He was born in Sri Gurusar Modia village in Rajasthan’s Sri Ganganagar district on August 15, 1967, to a landlord father. An only child, Singh helped his father on the farm in his early years.
Singh, it is said, was always spiritual. When he was seven, he was picked out by Shah Satnam Singh, then head of the Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa, who anointed him Ram Rahim.
Sixteen years later, in 1990, Satnam Singh invited his disciples from all over the country for a grand satsang where 23-year-old Singh was chosen as his successor.
The Dera chief, who completed his high school, is married to Harjeet Kaur. They have two daughters, Charanpreet and Amanpreet, both of whom are married, and a son Jasmeet. He also adopted a girl.
Rampal Maharaj
In 2014 the guru Rampal Maharaj barricaded himself into his ashram guarded by devotees armed with stones, petrol bombs and other weapons after a court issued a warrant for his arrest on a series of charges, including conspiracy to murder.
It was days before police were finally able to clear the giant complex and arrest the guru, who considered himself an incarnation of a 15th-century mystic Indian poet. Six people died during the siege.
Followers said the guru regularly bathed in milk, which was then used to make kheer, a sweet rice pudding that they believed could cure illnesses.
Ashutosh Maharaj
Devotees of Ashutosh Maharaj, who died in January 2014, are preserving his body in a freezer and insist he is in a deep meditative state.
The hugely wealthy founder of the multimillion dollar Divya Jyoti Jagriti Sansthan (Divine Light Awakening Mission) sect apparently died of a cardiac arrest.
But his followers say it is a spiritual state called samadhi and have kept his body in a freezer at his heavily guarded 40-hectare ashram in the northern state of Punjab.
One man who claimed to be his former driver has alleged that followers were refusing to release the body because they wanted a share of the guru’s assets.
Swami Nithyananda
Indian guru Swami Nithyananda faces a series of assault and sexual abuse charges, although he has never been convicted.
Five women accused the 40-year-old of abusing them at his Hindu religious retreat in the southern state of Karnataka. He was held in jail for 53 days in 2010 after a sex video scandal.
When a local television station aired the footage purportedly showing him fondling two women, angry villagers attacked his ashram, where devotees practise yoga and follow spiritual teachings.
Nithyananda, who also operates a meditation centre in Los Angeles, has claimed to possess paranormal powers of levitation.
Sathya Sai Baba
Sathya Sai Baba was one of India’s most famous and widely followed spiritual gurus, known for his vast charitable empire.
When he died in 2011, he was given a state funeral attended by tens of thousands of followers, as well as then-prime minister Manmohan Singh and cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar.
But his trust was often criticised for lack of transparency. After his death 98 kilos (215 pounds) of gold, 307 kilos of silver and Rs115 million (around Dh6.59 million or $1.8 million) in cash were found in his private quarters.
At public meetings, his showman antics — in which he would miraculously produce gold coins or watches on stage — brought him both fame and notoriety, with critics accusing him of being a fraudster.
Chandraswami
Chandrawami is best known for being the spiritual adviser of former Indian prime minister Narasimha Rao. He was arrested for swindling $100,000 from a London businessman and was charged Rs 9 crore for violating the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. He was also held responsible for involvement in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. His association with former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao brought Chandraswami -- the controversial tantrik -- into prominence. Interestingly, the controversial guru's finances have fluctuated with his political fortunes.
