Asaram Bapu verdict a glimmer of hope for Gujarat rape victims, says ex-driver
By Express News Service | Published: 26th April 2018 03:13 AM |
Last Updated: 26th April 2018 03:13 AM | A+A A- |
Top-Policemen at the main entrance of Asaram Bapu ashram
BHOPAL: The former car driver and body guard of Asaram and his son Narayan Sai hailed the Jodhpur court verdict of Wednesday pronouncing life imprisonment to the self-proclaimed godman in a minor’s sexual assault case.
“Law has prevailed, the court has awarded Asaram what he deserved. I hope for similar verdict in other rape cases in which Asaram and son Narayan Sai are accused in Gujarat,” said 43-year-old Indore-based Satish Wadhwani, who is a key prosecution witness in rape cases against Sai in Surat and Asaram in Ahmadabad.
“My statements have already been recorded by the Surat and Ahmadabad police in the past and I’m waiting to now expose the godman and his son in the courts in Gujarat,” said Wadhwani, who has been provided a gunman’s security by the MP police owing to threats to his life since the arrest of the godman from Indore’s Khandwa Road Ashram in 2013.
“I worked as driver, bodyguard and even cook for more than a decade from 1998 to 2010 for both Narayan Sai and his godman father Asaram. But Sai brutally assaulted me in 2008-09 at his Ashram in Indore after I questioned the misdeeds of the father-son duo. A few months later I stopped serving them,” Wadhwani told TNIE over phone.
Wadhwani, who claimed to have accompanied Asaram to different parts of India in 2007-08, also alleged that “despite being written in the Indore ashram that entry of girls and women was prohibited in the ashram after sunset, I myself spotted several young girls coming to the ashram’s rear gate at late nights and staying at the meditation rooms there.” He also alleged that around 2.5 acres land owned by his joint family too had been captured by the father-son duo near village Mirzapur at Indore’s Khandwa Road.
Landmarks named after Asaram to be rechristened
Following the conviction of Asaram in a rape case, MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the places named after the controversial godman would be rechristened.Nobody is above the law, Chouhan said and promised “appropriate action” on an activist’s demand that two places in Bhopal named after Asaram be renamed.
“There is nothing above public sentiments, constitution and law in the country,” the CM tweeted.
