Baaprey Bapu Asaram!

 

 

Human sacrifice to make a godman’s son immortal? This TSI investigation by Hitesh Ankleshwaria shows even that has been alleged against one of the top godmen of the country, Asaram Bapu, in a rare instance when an FIR was actually allowed to be filed against him. The immensely powerful godman is almost untouchable, so much so that the incident of the FIR being filed – only after the state DGP intervened – has been almost blacked out in the local media, though this is the stuff day-long TV BREAKING NEWS is made of!

On the night of August 15, while the rest of India was still celebrating its 61st year of Independence, Rajesh Sukhabhai Solanki was trying hard to hold back his tears. Kidnapped, tortured and then abandoned on a deserted highway, he was beaten, physically and mentally. Yet, the thought of his four-year-old son Chintan kept reminding him that he cannot afford to give up – if not for himself then for his son at least – even if it meant going against powerful people and risking his life. After all, the child had been longing to see his mother for five months now, ever since she mysteriously disappeared on March 23.

Rajesh, a farmer from Kangwai village of Chikhli Tehsil in South Gujarat’s Navsari district, has a difficult task at hand. He needs to rescue his pregnant wife Bakula who, he believes, is being held against her wishes by the powerful godman Asaram Bapu and his son Narayan Sai in one of their ashrams. The duo, he says, are forcibly making his wife an accessory in their tantrik rituals, which includes human sacrifices.

In his First Information Report to the police (of which TSI has a copy) filed at the Kalupur Police Station in Ahmedabad at 1 am on August 16, Rajesh has accused Asaram and his ‘tantrik’ son Narayan Sai of trying to kidnap him and his son. The formal complaint also accuses Asaram’s disciple Gulab Lallu Chauhan and his goons of threatening him against searching for his wife. Though he has barely managed to lodge an FIR against the father-son duo and their four henchmen, the police apparently are in no mood to go up against a ‘guru’ who enjoys not just a huge following but also substantial political clout. His is not an isolated case; many women are missing, and though many suspect the ashram's sadhaks (practitioners) of being behind these disappearances, no one has dared lodged a complaint against this influential man simply because the authorities do not entertain complaints against him. Hence, so far, only Rajesh has been ‘lucky’ enough to get his FIR registered.

Rajesh’s story has all the ingredients of a potboiler. On the day she disappeared, a pregnant Bakula – before leaving for a regular check up at the Mahuva Government Hospital – asks Rajesh to pick her up in the evening from her parent’s house at Aamchak village of Mahuva Tehsil. When Rajesh reaches his in-laws house, not only does he find the house locked but also learns from the neighbours that his mother-in-law has been away for many days. He stays put in the village, but when his wife and her mother do not turn up even after two days, he files a missing person report at the Mahuva Police Station. After 15 days, when his mother-in-law returns, she tells a baffled Rajesh that she was away on some religious work and had not met her daughter during this time.

Despite all his efforts, he fails to find his wife. Then he recalls that Bakula’s aunt Jasodaben, who sold flowers at the Asaram Ashram in Jahangirpura (Surat), frequently visited their place and decides to look for his wife at the ashram. “When I reached the Asaram Ashram, I wasn’t allowed to enter. At first I was surprised, but when I noticed that Jasodaben was hiding something, right then I knew this woman had played some role in the sudden disappearance of my wife,” Rajesh told TSI. When they denied him entry for the second time on July 30, it convinced him that these people were the reason his wife was not with him. His fears were confirmed the very next day, when on his way to Dindoli Police Station, Rajesh was stopped by Gulab Lallu Chauhan, one of Asaram’s disciples, and warned of 'dire consequences' if he continued his search for Bakula. “He pointed at my son and bluntly told me that if I was searching for the mother of this child, I was wasting my time. He told me he was a tantrik working for Asaram Bapu and that my wife had joined their group and was learning Tantra Vidya on the orders of Asaram Bapu,” Rajesh said.

He claims Chauhan also told him that the two kids who had recently died at the Asaram Ashram at Ahmedabad had not died their natural deaths, but had been sacrificed so that Ashram Bapu’s son Narayan could gain immortality. His wife, he was told, had been 'used' during that tantrik ritual. Chauhan, says Rajesh, also boasted that two other children had been used as human sacrifices at the Chhindwada Ashram.

“This man told me they were going to kill eight more children for Narayan Sai’s immortality and they needed my wife to complete this ritual. He warned me that if I dared disobey him and interfered in any way until she finished her task, he would kill me and my son,” he added.

Rajesh says Chauhan also made it very clear to him that Asaram Bapu and Narayan Sai had contacts in ‘very high places’ and any attempt on his part to file a complaint against them would be totally useless. And Chauhan was right, as Rajesh was to find out later when his formal complaint to the DGP, lodged on August 3, failed to stir the police into action. And he found out Chauhan’s threats of ‘dire consequences’ were not empty either when he was kidnapped from Kalupur Railway Station, tortured and then dumped on a deserted Gandhinagar highway by Asaram’s men when he tried to personally meet the DGP at his Gandhinagar office on August 15. “They even slapped my son who was accompanying me,” he says, sobbing. Last month, people from all over the state had staged a violent protest against Asaram after the unnatural deaths of two boys at the Asaram Gurukul near Motera village in Ahmedabad. It was during this time that people, who once had entry into the ashram, started talking about the tantrik practices that took place in these ashrams. Though the police maintained that the cause of death of these children was drowning, there are many who believe the young boys were used as human sacrifices.

Rajesh is frustrated that despite lodging a formal complaint the police are yet to start the investigation. “We have asked our officers for permission to investigate this case. We shall start the probe when we get the approval,” RM Rathod, Police Inspector of Kalupur Police Station, told TSI. As the police drag their feet in the case, a few questions arise: will Rajesh ever see his wife and Chintan his mother? How many children will have to die and how many Bakulas have to be kidnapped before ‘investigation’ is initiated? And all for the sake of Narayan Sai’s immortality?