The Rajasthan High Court on Monday extended the interim bail granted to jailed self-styled godman Asaram till July 1. As per an order by Justice Vinit Kumar Mathur and Justice Dinesh Mehta, the bail conditions mentioned in the HC's January order, as set by the Supreme Court, will continue to apply. In January, the SC had granted Asaram his first ever interim bail till March 31, 2025, solely on medical grounds, in the 2013 rape case of a Surat-based woman with one of the conditions being that Asaram can’t meet his followers in a group. Subsequently, the Rajasthan HC too had granted Asaram temporary Suspension of Sentence (SOS) on medical grounds, leading to Asaram getting out on bail since his arrest over 12 years ago in 2013. Beginning in August last year, Asaram was granted parole and multiple extensions, including for a visit to a Pune hospital. However, unlike parole, there are no restrictions on Asaram’s movements during an interim bail. Asaram’s lawyers Nishant Bora, Yashpal Rajpurohit and others had now sought extension of Asaram’s interim bail for a period of six months. Bora told the court that considering Asaram’s medical condition and other factors, Gujarat HC had extended his bail till June 30, 2025. However, the complainant’s lawyer, P C Solanki, filed an application for cancellation of interim bail arguing that Asaram was “misusing the liberty which was granted to him by this Court and he is not only meeting the disciples but also giving sermons” and shared certain video-clippings and newspaper cuttings. Earlier, the court had directed the state government to submit its response in relation to Solanki’s claims. Additional Advocate General Deepak Choudhary said that the government’s reply included statements of two constables, who have been with Asaram throughout his interim bail, and pointed out that as per the testimony of both the constables, Asaram had not given any sermon. Although the court found “stray instances of certain disciples meeting the applicant, the same according to us, cannot be taken to be a breach of the order passed by the Supreme Court, by the applicant (Asaram)." Asaram too filed an affidavit “in which he has clearly asserted that neither any organised speech/sermon was given nor had he met with disciples in groups.” “So far as the medical condition of the applicant is concerned, the High Court of Gujarat has considered the same deeply and we do not wish to intake the same exercise afresh and take view other than what has been taken by the High Court of Gujarat,” the Rajasthan HC said. Asaram was sentenced to life in prison in April 2018 by a Jodhpur court which found him guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl in one of his ashrams in 2013. Asaram, alias Ashumal, was charge-sheeted on November 6, 2013 and after a trial lasting almost five years, the Magistrate, Special Court, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, convicted him on April 25, 2018. He was convicted for the offences under Sections 370(4), 342, 354-A, 376(2)(f), 376-D, 506, 509/34 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, Sections 23 and 26 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, and Sections 5(f)/6, 5(g)/6, and 8 of the POCSO Act. In January 2023, Asaram was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Gandhinagar sessions court after holding him guilty for rape and unnatural sex in a case registered in 2013 for raping a woman disciple, who hailed from Surat, on several occasions from 2001 to 2006 when she was living at his ashram at Motera near Ahmedabad. The court had also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Asaram to be paid as compensation to the victim.
