Gandhinagar (Gujarat): A court in Gujarat's Gandhinagar on Monday convicted self-styled godman Asaram Bapu in a woman disciple rape case registered against him in 2013. Sessions court judge DK Soni reserved its order on the quantum of sentence for Tuesday (January 31).
The court acquitted six other accused, including Asaram's wife, due to the lack of evidence.
As per the FIR lodged at Chandkheda police station in Ahmedabad, Asaram Bapu allegedly raped the woman on several occasions from 2001 to 2006 when she was living at his ashram on the outskirts of the city. "The court has accepted the prosecution case and convicted Asaram under sections 376 2(C) (rape), 377 (unnatural offences) and other provisions of the Indian Penal Code for illegal detention, among others," special public prosecutor RC Kodekar said on Monday.
The controversial godman is currently lodged in jail in Jodhpur in another rape case. A Surat-based woman had filed a case of rape and illegal confinement against Asaram Bapu and seven others, one of whom died during the pendency of the trial, in October 2013. A chargesheet was filed in July 2014.
Asaram is already serving a life sentence in two separate sexual offence cases, besides other lesser punishments. He is presently lodged in a jail in Jodhpur since 2018, when he was brought from Indore where he was arrested in 2013. In April 2018, a Jodhpur court had sentenced Asaram to life in prison after finding him guilty of raping a teenage girl in his ashram in 2013.
His accomplices Sharad and Shilpi were sentenced to 20 years in jail by the court in the same case for their roles. The teenager had said in her complaint that Asaram had called her to his ashram in the Manai area near Jodhpur and raped her on the night of August 15, 2013. The 16-year-old girl from Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh was studying at Asaram's ashram in Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh. He was also convicted in a 2002 rape case and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In 2021, the Supreme Court had dismissed the plea of Asaram Bapu that his sentence is suspended for a few months for undergoing ayurvedic treatment, saying the offense was not an ordinary crime at all.
