After Asaram Bapu and Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan, another self-styled godman is under the scanner for alleged gruesome crimes against women. Over 50 minor girls were rescued from the premises of Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya in a joint rescue operation by the Delhi Police and Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) on December 23. Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya is a nexus of ashrams in Delhi run by self-styled baba Virendra Dev Dixit. With successive raids on Dixit’s many ashrams over the last week, over 100 women and girls were rescued from inhumane living conditions in the ashrams.
Who is Virendra Dev Dixit?
Known as “Bade Bhaiya” among his female followers, Dixit reportedly got interested in Brahma Kumaris (a religious movement focused on spiritual roles of women) and according to a police officer, even attempted to sneak into one of the rooms in the all-female university premises for which he was thrown out. Afterwards, the self-styled baba decided to open his own all-women spiritual university and opened the first ashram in Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh in 1998.
Photo Courtesy: The Financial Express
Imitating the Brahma Kumaris, Dixit started giving out spiritual lessons and started gaining followers among women. Over the next two decades, he established over 200 ‘prison-like’ ashrams all over UP, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Punjab, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh as well as in Nepal where he confined both adult and minor women.
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How were the girls kept in ashrams?
Over the successive raids in his many ashrams, the police found that his ashrams had dark and small congested underground chambers accessible by narrow lanes and bolted with heavy iron shutters. The windows of the building had iron grills and women were made to sleep on mats in these chambers.
Photo Courtesy: Jansatta
The raid teams found several medicines and syringes inside the premises of the ashrams and are yet to determine whether they were kept under the influence of drugs. Even though the women denied that they were sexually assaulted, the police carried out the raids on complaints by local residents who alleged that they could hear ‘cries of help’.
The police officers who raided the ashrams said the baba used to tell the women that he was a reincarnation of Lord Ram. Dixit would allegedly coerce the women into submitting to him physically and emotionally by telling them that the world would end in 2066.
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Possible human trafficking ring?
DCW Chief Swati Maliwal said that boxes filled with letters containing ‘explicit content’ were recovered from the raids and many girls had been kept in the cell-like chambers for as long as 5 years. She suspected that the women were victims of human trafficking. Maliwal said,
These ashrams seem to be den of illegal activities. The CBI should urgently close down these ashrams and arrest the baba. The CBI should also investigate the role of police and netas. Locals told us that many girls were taken away from here before our operation.
Delhi Police raiding the ashram in Rohini (Photo Courtesy: The Indian Express)
She also said,
There are no proper records about any girl here and since when they have been staying. The girls don’t respond when asked about their parents.
The Delhi High Court directed the CBI, which is probing into the alleged crimes, to trace the whereabouts of the baba who is suspected to be hiding in Nepal.
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Source – The Indian Express, Daily Pioneer, News 18
