How a 19-year-old woman’s lone battle led to conviction of a Jain monk – seven years after he raped her in Surat

Earlier this month, a court in Surat held the monk, now 56, guilty of raping the woman, awarding him 10-year imprisonment and imposing a penalty of Rs 50,000.

The Additional Sessions Judge of the special court (Rape and POCSO cases) Ashwinkumar Keshavlal Shah, on April 5, convicted the accused on charges of rape (section 376 (1)) and section 376 2 (f) where the accused is a “relative, guardian or teacher, or a person in a position of trust or authority towards the woman, commits rape on such woman”.

However, considering the “27 years of monkhood” of the accused along with his “good behaviour”, the court included the seven years he had passed in the jail as an undertrial as part of the sentence. “This is his first mistake. He does not have a criminal record,” the court said.

First impression

The family of the victim belonged to another state and had moved to Vadodara for her father’s job. Here, her parents came in contact with Sharma at the temple situated in the city’s Mandvi area. Soon, the couple began to consider Sharma as their “dharmaguru (religious teacher)” and started meeting him personally. All this while, the victim was in another city studying design. On March 31, when she came home, her parents took her to the temple.

Soon after, her parents started visiting Sharma on a daily basis. One day, the monk asks the parents to share their daughter’s number with him. “I will bless her,” he told them. On April 7, he “blessed” her over the phone, the woman wrote in her complaint. Two-three days later, Sharma called her with an odd request: “Tell me something you cannot share with others”. He then proceeded to ask her “awkward questions about her private parts”, according to the case papers. He also told her not to share the conversation with anyone “or her parents would die,” she told the police in her complaint.

By this time, the woman had grown wary of Sharma. He would call her daily, and she wouldn’t answer. He complained to her parents. “As per the stars, these are auspicious days. I will give her a mantra so that she does well in her exams,” he told them, according to the complaint.

Her mother told the woman to call Sharma. She continued to resist until one day, the monk rang her up and asked to speak when “no one was around”. He said, “I have got a (divine) message…that something bad has happened to you. Send me your nude pictures on WhatsApp so that I can correct all the wrong. If you call me daily, no harm will come to you,” Sharma told the woman. She gave in to his demands but stopped taking his calls on the pretext that her exams were on.

A few days later, Sharma was at a temple near Bharuch Railway Station. The woman’s parents took her there. He did not exchange one word with her at the time. Then, he began calling her “from different mobile numbers and also shared a WhatsApp number,” the victim told the police.

‘Circle’ of deception

On September 30, 2017, when the victim was home for Dussehra, her parents told her that the “maharaj” had asked them to bring her to see him in Surat. He had specified that they should come “for darshan in the night”, as per the complaint.

The following day, the woman, her parents and her brother left for Surat. At the Mahavir Digambar Jain temple in Nanpura area, Sharma asked them to see him in his room on the top floor.
As per the victim’s account in the case papers, “He told them, ‘We have to do a jaap (chant). So, come with me’. He took my parents to an adjoining room, made them sit on the floor and circled them with sandalwood shreds asking them to chant with their eyes closed. He instructed them not to step out of the circle ‘no matter what happens’,” the woman noted in her complaint.

Sharma then gestured to the woman’s brother who followed him to a room downstairs. He then came back to the woman and asked, “Today is a good day. What do you want?” She told him that she only wanted to see her parents, and herself, happy.

According to the complaint, Sharma then took the victim to the next room and raped her. Before that, he gave out a threat: “If you make any noise, something bad will happen to your parents.” After raping her, he repeated the warning. “If you talk to anyone about this your parents will die,” he told her, as per the court papers.

The family returned to Vadodara the same night. The next morning, the woman confided in her mother. The day after, she went back to the city where she was studying. A few hours later, she fell ill. Her parents picked her from her college and took her straight to a psychologist in Vadodara. The psychologist suggested they file a police complaint and see a gynaecologist. The gynaecologist told them she would only examine her after a police complaint was lodged.

“They (the parents) did not lodge a complaint out of fear since he was their dharmaguru. They also feared they would have a loss of face in the community,” she told police.

The woman decided to file the complaint on her own. “What happened to me should not happen to any other woman,” she told the police.

On October 13, 2017, the victim reached Athwalines police station and lodged a complaint against Sharma.

From monk to convict

Sources close to Sharma said he hailed from Guna district in Madhya Pradesh. At the age of 21, he took diksha (initiation) from the late Kalyansagarji Maharaj. Sharma soon left his family and all worldly attachments, devoting his life to the path of the Digambara Jain sect. For the last 27 years, he has spent his life as a Jain monk, rising to the rank of an Acharya.

Inside the jail, his preachings continue.

Surat Central Jail Superintendent J N Desai said, “His behaviour was good and he had no enmity with any of the prisoners or jail staffers. He has been given a prisoner number; his barracks have been changed and he has to wear a jail uniform now… While talking to him, he came across as a soft-spoken person. He used to preach to the prisoners regularly.”

Defence version

When asked by the judge about the charges levelled at him, the accused told the court that the victim’s father had “taken revenge”. In his statements, Sharma said that in 2017, at a ‘pichhi parivartan’ — event to replace the feather fan used by monks to bless followers — the old pichhi was auctioned, as part of a practice. The amount thus generated is used for the welfare of the members of the community. The defence told court that a relative of the victim announced that he would contribute Rs 2.99 crore for the old pichhi. The victim’s father asked Sharma to pay 40% of this, which he denied, the defence told the court. The victim’s father died on November 11, 2020.