A Gandhinagar Sessions Court’s decision Tuesday to give the life sentence to Asumal Harpalani, popularly known as Asaram Bapu, in a rape case marks yet another fall for the self-styled godman who had once been a powerful figure in the country with a huge following and affinity with important political personalities across party lines. This is the second conviction for Asaram in a rape case. Earlier, in April 2018, he was convicted for raping a 16-year-old girl in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Both rape cases — in Jodhpur and Gandhinagar — were registered in 2013. Before falling into disgrace, Asaram was a popular religious guru. After starting his first ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad in the 1970s, he established a multi-crore business empire — consisting of various products and spiritual literature — that continued to grow while he went on establishing ashrams across the country. With that, the number of his followers also increased and ran into lakhs. A monthly publication of the Asaram Ashram, Rishi Prasad, had a huge circulation among his followers. With such influence, Asaram’s political followers also increased, cutting across party lines and he also had a strong following in Gujarat's bureaucracy. Some of the political leaders who were seen with Asaram during his prime days include the then chief minister of Gujarat and current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, and senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh. Retired IPS officer D G Vanzara, who was in jail in connection with three alleged fake encounter cases and was later discharged, was also known to be among his followers. Vanzara had launched a party, the Praja Vijay Paksh, which contested some seats in the Assembly polls in December but lost in all. On condition of anonymity, a senior Congress leader said, “He (Asaram) had political followers across party lines. Kamal Nath was considered very close to him. However, he was more close to BJP leaders.” Asaram started facing stiff challenges from 2008 onwards, when two minor boys studying at a residential gurukul run by his trust went missing on July 3, 2008. Their bodies were found on the Sabarmati riverbed two days later. The incident was followed by a huge public agitation against the self-styled godman and his ashram. The two boys were cousins and their parents alleged their sons had fallen prey to some exorcist in the ashram. Public protests in the episode continued for days, following which the Gujarat government appointed a judicial commission headed by retired Gujarat High Court judge D K Trivedi to probe the circumstances in which the two boys went missing. Asaram was known for his grand annual celebration of Guru Purnima at his Ahmedabad ashram. The Guru Purnima celebration of 2008 fell on July 18, when the protest against him was at its peak. It turned violent after inmates of his ashram attacked the media, which had assembled to cover the event. Following the protest, the police registered a case of causing death by negligence against seven ashram inmates who were connected with the gurukul from which the two boys had gone missing. Meanwhile, the parents of the two boys continue demanding a CBI probe in the case. In 2019, the D K Trivedi Commission submitted its report to the state government in which it gave Asaram a clean chit in the episode. However, Asaram’s real challenge came in 2013, when two cases of rape were registered against him in Jodhpur and Gandhinagar. His son Narayan Sai too was booked in other similar cases. Several witnesses in the rape cases, pending trial in different parts of the country, were found dead. One of them, Amrut Prajapati, was shot dead in Rajkot in 2014, allegedly by one of the self-styled godman's followers. Commenting on Asaram’s conviction, the father one of the gurukul boys who was found dead said, “It is good that he has been convicted. Our society believes in religion and when a religious guru does such acts, he has to be given exemplary punishment, so that it can deter other such religious gurus.”
