Four Women accuse UP Godman of Forced Detainment, Torture and Rape

Four women of Basti district of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday said that they were raped and tortured by Godman Baba Sachidanand and four of his henchmen repeatedly.

According to Sankalp Sharma, the Superintendent of Police of Basti, the four women filed a complaint against Sachidanand and said that he forcibly detained them at his ashram in Basti and raped them. The women also accused his henchmen of torturing them when they refused to obey their commands.

“The complaints are from Jharkhand. They were brought to the ashram of Sachidanand in 2008 when they were aged 12-years-old. The four complaints alleged that since last nine years the godman and his henchmen forcibly detained them in the ashram and raped them,” Sharma told Newsclick.

The women had since then been confined to the boundaries of the Ashram.

The complaints told local media on Wednesday that Sachidanand had several ashrams across the country. 

“Baba Sachidanand had forcibly kept me and many others inside the ashram and his henchmen used to keep a watch on us so that we do not leave. There is one baba called Sachidanand who used to rape us and then there are his deputies who also sexually assaulted and raped us,” said one of the complaints after registering the complaint in Basti police station.

“I came here in 2008. At that time my age was 12 years-old. I was very young and did not know what is happening with me. But when I started protesting against what the baba used to do, I was raped by his henchmen and deputies,” the complaint alleged in her complaint. 

“We somehow ran away from the Ashram. Now we want the police to arrest him and his goons and be punished for the heinous things they did with innocent girls like me and others. There are other followers of the Baba who too were going through similar trauma, still living in the Ashram. They will not come forth on their own and the police will have to rescue them,” another complaint told the media outside the police station, after registering the complaint. 

The Superintendent of Police also told Newsclick that they were trying to nab the godman who is absconding but one of his disciples has been detained from the Ashram. Police are interrogating him. The Ashram which belongs to the accused godman is named as Satyalok Ashram Religious Trust. The police were trying to find out if it was a religious trust. Baba Sachidanand alias Dayanand is the head of this trust who travels across the country and delivers religious discourses. 

“An FIR has been lodged under relevant sections of the IPC. We are probing the matter and making raids to find out more about the godman. The complaints have also alleged that there are women disciples of the godman who helped him rape the minor girls,” Sharma said.  

The news of sexual exploitation by the UP godman comes after the allegations that have surfaced against Delhi based godman Virender Dev Dixit, who had detained several women in his ashram in Rohini.  More than 100 women and minor girls were locked up behind metal doors in “animal-like conditions” — with many being sexually exploited for years — inside a fortress-like ashram right in the heart of the national capital. 

A bench of acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar has asked the CBI director to immediately set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate FIRs lodged in Delhi and look into the case records relating to the complaints of the missing girls, the commission of sexual offences and also a case of suicide in the ashram.

Earlier in August, the Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted by the Haryana HC for raping at least two women. After his conviction, there were large-scale riots that injured and killed many in Haryana. Another godman Asaram Bapu is also facing trial on charges of raping the daughter of his devotee from Shahjahanpur inside his ashram.