New Delhi: The Supreme Court Tuesday granted interim bail to Asumal Harpalani, popularly known as Asaram Bapu, on medical grounds in a 2013 rape case.
The SC also directed Asaram to not meet his followers once he is released on interim bail, as per the report. In August 2013, Delhi police had filed a case against him on charges of raping a 16-year old girl in his Jodhpur Ashram. A special SC/ST court in Jodhpur had convicted the self-proclaimed godman, in the sexual assault case. He has been in jail since August 31, 2013, and was charged under relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. In February 2023, a Gandhinagar Sessions Court ordered life sentence to Asaram. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Gandhinagar sessions court on January 31 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. Before the conviction, 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.
