State prison dept examining mercy petition filed by Asaram’s follower
The state home department has forwarded a mercy petition filed by a follower of selfstyled godman Asaram Bapu, who was convicted for raping a minor girl in August 2013, to the jail department.
Asaram is serving life imprisonment at the Jodhpur Central Jail.
“We have got the petition a few days back and we have forwarded it to the Jodhpur Central Jail administration,” said Rupinder Singh, IG for Jail Department.
Dada Jagannath Kadam, a resident of Thane district in Maharashtra, who is a follower of Asaram had written a petition on June 12 and had sent it to the governor of Rajasthan requesting him to pardon and suspend the sentenced by the special Jodhpur court.
“I have filed the petition under Article 161 of the Constitution and section 433(A) of CrPC. Under Article 161, the governor of the Rajasthan has the power to commute, remit, suspend and pardon the sentence passed against Asaram by the court,” Kadam said.
The petition written by Kadam to the Rajasthan governor alleged that other ‘gurus’ and saints were conspiring against him. “Asaram is a great person and that’s why politicians, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former PM late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Rajanath Singh and all other dignitaries of the country have praised his work. This good work has created a jealousy in some saints and they conspired to implicate Asaram in a criminal case.”
When Kadam was asked if he has contacted Asaram, he said, “I am an ordinary man and I cannot meet him. I came to know that I can file a mercy petition under the constitutional rights conferred upon every Indian citizen.”
Asaram (79), who runs ashrams and has millions of followers in India and overseas, was convicted in a closed jailhouse court in Jodhpur on November 29, where hundreds of police stood guard near the jail premise. He was arrested in Indore and brought to Jodhpur on September 1, 2013, to face trial in the case in which he was accused of raping a girl who was then 16 at his ashram in Jodhpur.
Challenging the sentence, Asaram had moved the Jodhpur High
JAIPUR: GYANDEV AHUJA, BJP MLA
Court on July 2 but the petition is yet to be listed for hearing.
Two more cases are pending against Asarama in Rajasthan. In 2014, the Jodhpur police had registered a case against Asaram, his personal caretaker, Shiva, and three other followers for allegedly threatening the station house officer (SHO) of Udaimandir police station on an instant messaging service. The message mentioned teaching a lesson to the SHO and hurting his family members.
In February, 2017, on the directions of the Supreme Court, the Jodhpur Police registered a case against Asaram and others for filing fake documents in support of an interim bail application. During the hearing of Asaram’s interim bail application in January 2017, the Supreme Court found that he had submitted a fake medical report. The court then slapped ~1 lakh penalty on Asaram and ordered the police to register a case.