Five girls were rescued from an ashram run by a spiritual head in south-west Delhi’s Dwarka by a joint team of the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) and the Delhi police on Saturday.
The raid came in the wake of similar operations conducted on the Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya, founded by Virender Dev Dixit, in Rohini on Thursday where women and girls were kept confined like “animals in a cage”.
The issue had surfaced after a PIL filed by the Foundation for Social Empowerment, an NGO, before the Delhi High Court submitted that several minors and women were allegedly being illegally confined at the ashram.
Inspection teams
Following the PIL, the court had set up a committee comprising lawyers and DCW chief Swati Maliwal to inspect the premises of the institute. It also asked the committee to inspect eight similar centres being run by Dixit in the Capital after their existence was brought to the court’s attention.
