This story was first published in THE WEEK issue dated September 15, 2013
It is the only marble structure in miles in a state famous for the stone. Asaram Bapu’s meditation hut―his place of solitude―looms large at the far end of the green fields in Manai village in Rajasthan. About 30 kilometres from Jodhpur, on a dirt track off the main road, the ashram is eerily secluded. It is here where the godman is alleged to have sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl, a student of his Chhindwara gurukul in Madhya Pradesh, on August 15.
The villagers keep a distance from the ashram. “No one has ever been there,’’ says the ward panch. Neither do they have any regard for the godman. “Why should we?” asks a villager. “He brings only women there.”
Asaram, who was arrested in Indore after much drama, has been brought to the ashram by the Rajasthan Police. During interrogation, he is reported to have admitted that he was alone with the girl. But he denied the assault charges. “He has maintained that he is being framed,’’ says a police officer.
It is a battle between faith and rationality. The situation is already tense with Asaram's followers alleging a conspiracy. “This is a larger conspiracy to defame Hindu priests. It is a global plot planned by Christian missionaries,’’ says Vishnu, who lives in the Manai ashram.
But the police think otherwise. “We have a solid case,’’ says Ajay Pal Lamba, deputy commissioner. The police say the godman, who has been accused of sexually assaulting the girl on the pretext of exorcising demons, has done this many times before. His aide Shiva, who is in custody, has said that Asaram met women alone.
Asaram has been booked under Sections 376, 342, 506 and 509 of the IPC, Section 8 of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences Act and Sections 23 and 26 of the Juvenile Justice Act. “He would choose girls who were studying in Class XII,’’ says a police officer. These girls would be required to “surrender’’ to him. “His followers believe that he is an image of God. So to touch him guarantees that you are blessed,’’ he says.
The victims, allegedly, were chosen carefully, so as to minimise the risk of getting caught. “They were usually girls devoted to him. Also, their parents were devotees,’’ says a member of the investigating team. For Asaram's devotees, it is a privilege to be selected by him for individual attention. “They were given special treatment and encouraged to surrender before him. They were given a glimpse of the great future they would have at the ashram if they chose to agree,” says a police officer. The names of his influential devotees were trotted out in front of the girls, so that they knew that they would wield power over the powerful. “After which, these girls were made to believe that they were under the influence of a spirit that only Asaram could exorcise,” says the police officer.
The police say, though they are yet to confirm it, three other girls from the previous batch of the ashram were assaulted by the godman. “One left the ashram, the other two committed suicide,’’ says a source.
The details of the case read like a B-grade Hindi film plot. The girl was brought to the meditation hut to be ‘cured’, as the warden of her hostel had assured her parents that only Bapu could help. Her father, a transporter at Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, had been a devotee for 11 years. “The first day Asaram was out for a walk and the girl was asked to accompany him. She told him that she wanted to be a chartered accountant. He is believed to have told her that she would be better off surrendering to him,” says a police officer.
Later, Asaram allegedly took the girl to his kutir. Her parents were asked to stay outside. It is alleged that he assaulted her there and kept her locked up for four hours. And he let her go after threatening her that if she ever told anyone about it, he would kill her parents.
It was only when they got back to Shahjahanpur that the girl told her parents what had happened. They filed a complaint at the Kamla Nagar police station in Delhi on August 20. Asaram was holding a satsang (communion) in Delhi then. The police refused to file an FIR as the alleged assault had taken place in Jodhpur. The girl and her parents went to Jodhpur and registered a case.
Vishnu, who lives in the Manai ashram, says Asaram is being framed. “I was there when this incident happened. The girl and her parents came willingly. The time that they say that the incident took place they were sleeping. I locked them in myself.”
Asaram's lawyers are sure the case against him will fall apart. “The medical report of the girl doesn’t support rape,’’ says lawyer K.K Mannan, who had represented Chandraswami, another godman. “The statement of the girl is also contradictory.” Mannan expects to bail out the godman on grounds that “attempt to rape” is a bailable offence.
Asaram is no stranger to controversy. In January, he sparked off angry reactions when he said the woman who was raped in a bus in Delhi on December 16, 2012 could have saved herself if she had chanted a mantra and called the attackers brothers. In February, Rohit Pachuri, a 23-year-old devotee, died in mysterious circumstances while attending a satsang in Jabalpur. Pachuri's family says he was “poisoned” because he stumbled upon a “secret.’’
In 2009, Asaram faced attempt to murder charges from a former disciple called Raju Chandak. A year before that, the mutilated bodies of two students of Asaram's Ahmedabad ashram, cousins Abhishek and Dipesh Vaghela, had been found in a river. There were allegations of black magic and a commission was set up to investigate the murders. Chandak had deposed before the commission, which, he says, made him the target of the attack. The police, however, ruled out black magic and attributed the killings to another student, a 14-year-old boy.
At Asaram's Chhindwara gurukul in Madhya Pradesh, two boys were killed in August 2008. Siblings Mohanlal Yadav, 4, and Vedant Manode, 5, were found dead in toilets on consecutive days. Though rumours of black magic did the rounds again, the police laid the blame on another student. And the parents of the dead boys signed an affidavit saying that they didn’t want any action on the murder of their sons.
Students learn the hard way at Asaram's gurukuls. At the hostel of the Chhindwara ashram, 21 boys are crammed into rooms meant for eight. They sleep on the floor. “We are made to sleep at 10pm and get up at 4am. Often, we are beaten by teachers,” says Animesh Chouria, a class V student.
There have been many allegations of land-grabbing against Asaram and his trusts. He runs some 400 ashrams. His sprawling ashram on the Delhi ridge is alleged to have encroached on forest land. The ridge is a construction-free zone.
In January, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office recommended to the corporate affairs ministry that Asaram be prosecuted for a land-grab case in Madhya Pradesh. The land belonged to Jayant Vitamis Ltd, a company that shut shop in 1997. A trust managed by a few directors of the company allowed Asaram to hold a religious congregation on its premises. Asaram's supporters have not vacated the land yet. The ten-acre plot on the Delhi-Mumbai freight corridor is worth around Rs.700 crore.
The Chhindwara gurukul, which is located on a 21-acre campus, is a disputed property. The land was reportedly donated by Princess Gyanada Devi of the Shakti royal family of Chhattisgarh in 1997. Her family members say she had hearing problems and was coerced into signing some papers.
The Indore ashram, where Asaram was holed up before being arrested, is located on a property that was meant for a government garden of medicinal plants. Asaram got it on lease, agreeing to make a medicinal plant garden and a yoga centre. But he has erected huge buildings on it, violating the lease agreements.
None of these allegations has touched the clout Asaram enjoys among his followers. “Women, much better looking than the girl, are desperate for him to look at them just for a second. He has never done so,” says Bharati, a contractor from Ahmedabad, who travelled all the way to Jodhpur to support her guru.
Anil Makhija, 32, a devotee who runs a tea stall in Motera, believes he would have been blind without the godman's blessings. Says Rochiram, Anil's father: “When Anil was eight years old, he had some problem in the eyes. Doctors said he would go blind. I approached Bapu and he gave me some water and prasad. I applied it on my son’s eyes and he was fine.”
Asaram was born in Sindh, now in Pakistan, in 1941. His family came to India during the Partition. His parents had named him Asumal. According to the book Sant Asaramji ki Jeevan Jhanki, he was named Sant Shri Asaramji Maharaj on October 7, 1964 by Lilashaji Maharaj. Asaram constructed a small hut in Motera, on the banks of the Sabarmati. In 1973, he converted it into an ashram.
“I had accompanied a relative of mine to the ashram in the early 1970s. It was a small ashram with about 50 people sitting in front of him. His sermons had no depth. I felt he was trying to copy Rajneesh,” says veteran Gujarati journalist Devendra Patel. “There is no depth in his sermons even today.”
The BJP’s rise to power in Gujarat saw a fast expansion of Asaram's empire. “In Gujarat, we had katha tellers like Dongre Maharaj and Krishna Shankar Shastri, but we did not have any guru. Asaram used simple things like dancing to reach out to people. It was like circus. It was never protested,” says sociologist Gaurang Jani.
According to Patel, it is wrong to call Asaram a saint. “He is married. He has a son and a daughter. What he does with religion can be compared to capitalism,” he says.
Asaram's disciples, however, say he lives a simple life. “He wakes up around 3am and meditates for an hour. This is followed by a morning walk. On the days of satsang, he is busy with that. Otherwise, he reads letters that have come from across the country. He eats simple food and, at times, takes only a glass of milk for dinner,” says Omprakash Misra, a resident of Asaram's Motera ashram.
If his devotees are to be believed, the godman drinks only gangajal. Every week, it is said, water from the Ganges is sent to his ashrams. Even in police custody, he is said to have asked for gangajal. That is quite a reform for the man who allegedly started his career as a bootlegger in the eastern part of Ahmedabad. “People living in the Sabarmati area of Ahmedabad know about this and hence they do not have much regard for him,” says a senior journalist, requesting anonymity.
Mahesh Thakor, 46, an autorickshaw driver, says he remembers seeing Asaram sell country liquor on the banks of the Sabarmati. Kalaji Thakor, 75, a resident of Gandhinagar, has told the media that in the 1960s and 1970s when he made country liquor, Asaram used to buy it from him for reselling.
Asaram's arrest has shocked the followers. Anil hesitantly says the number of visitors at the Motera ashram has come down. According to an IB officer, instead of wearing whites, they come in coloured clothes as they fear what the public would think of them.
Faith and fortune make a combination potent enough to wipe out dark traces. Asaram has been effectively using it all along. But truth finally seems to be catching up with the godman.