Ashram death protest hangs between flare-up and fade-away

The bodies of Dipesh Vaghela and Abhishek Vaghela, aged 10 and 11 respectively, were found on the Sabarmati riverbed. The bodies were found mutilated, with internal organs missing in one of them. But the police said it might have been the work of stray dogs. The cops registered a case of accidental death, believing that the two may have died due to drowning. The parents of the boys, however, insisted that they might have been killed during some sorcery rite conducted in the ashram, and agitated for a CBI probe. Praful Vaghela, father of Dipesh, was on a fast alleging that local cops were hushing up the case.

The ashram’s assertion that it was open to probe didn’t cut much ice either with its growing detractors. And even the judicial probe — ordered belatedly by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is considered close to the Ashram — did not cool down tempers. Even Muslim ghettos in the walled city, which traditionally keep away from non-community issues, supported the call for a bandh on the issue.

In the meantime, what gave the issue a political colour was the barely concealed connection that the Ashram has with the high and mighty in the BJP. The Congress, too, jumped in to gain some mileage.

The agitation for a probe into the deaths of the boys originally started from the Nirnay Nagar neighbourhood of Ahmedabad to which they belonged. It soon found a fiery resonance throughout the state. With hundreds of lathi and sword-wielding ashram devotees prowling Ahmedabad roads to take on agitators, the city went under frequent bouts of localised trouble. The cops were busy firing in the air, tossing tear gas shells. It did not help the ashram when even the media was not spared and white-robed ashram devotees assaulted many journalists, including women.

The ashram first said that it acted in “self defence”, and then turned suitably apologetic.

The ashram’s founder is Asaram Bapu, a native of Sindh who had settled down in Gujarat post-partition. The ashram is one of the country’s largest and wealthiest spiritual abodes with property worth several thousand crores, 111 campuses within India and 1,200 meditation centres across the globe.