Asaram Bapu
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Controversy, sexual assault
September 2013
The Times of India, Jul 12 2015
Mrigank Tiwari
Prime witness in Asaram rape case shot at, dies
Kirpal Singh was shot at n Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Singh is he third witness to have lost his life after the controversy hit the headlines in 2013.
Shahjahanpur superintendent of police Babloo Kumar told TOI, “During investigation, the father of the sexual assault victim, who belongs to this district, had brought the fact to our knowledge that Singh was being threatened by three associates of Asaram.We have filed a case under Section 307 (attempt to murder) at Sadar Bazar police station and the matter is being investigated.“
In his statement recorded before a magistrate before succumbing to his injuries, Singh had said he was being regularly threatened by three associates of Asaram. He had expressed apprehension that they might have been involved in the attack. However, the victim had failed to identify the assailants.
Asaram is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, a native of Shahjahanpur, in his ashram at Jodhpur in August 2013. It may be recalled that the family of the girl was also attacked twice in Jodhpur during court hearings but were saved on both the occasions by alert security personnel. Another prime witness, Devendra Chawla, was shot at earlier.
In all, there have been nine attempts on the lives of various witnesses in the case since Asaram was lodged in Jodhpur jail in September 2013. While a prosecution witness had in February been stabbed to death in a Jodhpur court premises, another was shot in Muzaffarnagar in January 2015.
A saint or a conman?
India Today, August 6, 2015
Uday Mahurkar
From rags to riches to infamy
A saint or a conman? The jury is still out on the life and strife of self-styled godman Asaram Bapu
Allegations of violence, fraud, deception, sexual exploitation, land grabbing, illegal deals, bribery, murders, and finally etched as a saint in primary school textbooks in a state. All this for thousands of crores of rupees and over claims to impart spiritual nirvana to lakhs. That, in short is the life of Asaram Bapu -a rags-to-riches story that is as dramatic as it gets in the real world. Born in Birani village in Nawabshah (now Shaheed Benazirabad) district in Pakistan's Sindh province in 1941, Asaram was named Asumal Thaumal Harpalani. But that was then. Controversy has been his middle name ever since he met Leela Shah Baba, said to be a Gandhian spiritual master of Sindhis, at the latter's ashram in Kutch and subsequently decided that his "calling" was to be a spiritual figure himself. Rising from a mechanic at a bicycle shop in Ahmedabad in his teens to be a giant among the country's impressive list of self-declared spiritual and holy men, Asaram carefully built up his clout among politicians and bureaucrats in the 1980s and '90s, reaching his pinnacle in the first decade of the new millennium. Among those who shared the dais and paid him obeisance were political giants such as former prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and H.D. Deve Gowda, former president K.R. Narayanan, veteran leaders of the stature of L.K. Advani, George Fernandes and Farooq Abdullah, and the likes of Uma Bharti, Kamal Nath, Kapil Sibal and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, among others. Ads by ZINC
In 2002, within months of taking over the reins of Gujarat from Keshubhai Patel in October 2001, Narendra Modi began his campaign to win the by-election from Rajkot assembly seat by attending a programme of Asaram. But he later distanced himself after the spiritual leader's first brush with notoriety in 2008, when two boys from his Ahmedabad ashram went missing, their mutilated bodies surfacing after a couple of days on the banks of the Sabarmati. Following a public outcry, the Modi government in Gujarat ordered a probe.
But it was only a temporary set-back. Before his arrest in September 2013, Asaram was given the status of a state guest by chief ministers such as Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan, Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh, Prem Kumar Dhumal (Himachal Pradesh), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), and Parkash Singh Badal (Punjab). More recently, he managed to get his name entered in a Moral Science textbook for Class III students of Rajasthan as a saint, sharing space with the likes of Swami Vivekananda, Mother Teresa and Ramakrishna Paramhansa, among others. The state education department has said it will look into the matter.
While he has lakhs of followers, the septuagenarian's proclivity to put his foot in his mouth with bizarre Âstatements has also found an equal number of critics, although far less vocal and aggressive than the former. After the 9/11 attacks in the United States, Asaram seemed not struck by the magnitude of the terror strike that had left the whole world shell-shocked. Instead, he might have found a new hero, going by his praise for the suicide bombers' loyalty towards the then al Qaeda chief. "I salute (Osama) bin Laden. Those are the kind of followers I want," Asaram told his supporters from the pulpit in the Ahmedabad ashram. It was September 14, 2001-just three days after the biggest terror attack the world had come across until then.
Early in January 2013, when the country was still seething in rage following the gang rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi on December 16, 2012, Asaram addressed his Âfollowers in Tonk, Rajasthan. The victim, he said, could have avoided being raped and murdered by addressing her attackers as "brothers" instead of fighting to save her life and honour. When protests began against this shocker of a statement, Asaram called his critics "barking dogs", adding that there should not be stricter penalties for rape, as such laws would be misused by women of "loose character". When the chorus of protest grew too big for it to be brushed aside, he quickly Âapologised, saying his statement had been misinterpreted.
He had begun his life in the 'spiritual' world the same way-traversing truth, fiction and the world in between in a brazen but always assured way. Although he claims to have been taken by Leela Shah Baba as a disciple, some say he was never accepted by his first guru. Says an old disciple of Leela Shah based in Gandhidham, near the mouth of the Gulf of Kutch, "Baba never accepted him because he had severe reservations about him."
Skeletons had begun tumbling out of the Asaram ashram's closets soon after his first brush with Âdisrepute back in 2008-allegations of land-grabbing, sexual exploitation of women disciples in the ashrams, benami investments, cheating, to finally heckling, attacks on and bumping off of witnesses. They might have been a temporary setback, but before long Asaram was back in circulation among the political and business elite-almost each time. As a trial court in Jodhpur gets underway, hearing his case in the prison complex to ward off trouble by his supporters, it appears that run might have come to an end. At least for now.
Assets, unearthed
The Times of India, April 23, 2016
Rs 2,500cr illegal Asaram assets unearthed
The income-tax department in Surat has unearthed Rs 2,500 crore worth of unaccounted transactions of controversial godman Asaram and his son Narayan Sai after 42 bags recovered from Ahmedabad in 2015 were scanned.
These bags contained property documents, CDs, CPUs, hard discs and other materials relating to investments, bank deposits, shares and real estate.
A detailed report on unaccounted transactions and properties of the father-son duo was submitted to higher authorities in Ahmedabad for further action, sources said, adding, tax liability for the unaccounted transactions and income comes to Rs 750 crore.
