48 underage girls rescued from ashrams
Police: Raids found females kept in jail-like conditions.
NEW DELHI — On a recent Thursday, an emotional family reunion played out in a Delhi courtroom. A weeping 32-year-old woman finally embraced the sister she had barely seen in 14 years. The meeting, as recalled by the older sibling, was an emotional high point in an unfolding investigation into a secretive religious sect that has shocked this country.
At least 48 underage girls have been rescued in police raids on the sect’s ashrams in New Delhi since December 19, officials say. Officials say they have found women and girls kept in jail-like conditions, behind barbed wire and multiple locked gates. Authorities say there are hundreds more properties and potentially thousands of women and girls living in them.
The sect, Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya (AVV) preaches that its leader is an incarnation of various Hindu gods and has descended to earth to unite people of all faiths and transform them into deities. Little is known about the sect’s origins or its leader Virendra Dev Dixit, though followers say it is an offshoot of Brahma Kumaris - a large, international sect with over three dozen centers in the United States and millions of followers worldwide. Brahma Kumaris distanced itself and denounced Dixit’s organization decades ago.
AVV came under scrutiny after three families filed a case in Delhi’s High Court saying that their female relatives had vanished after joining the sect. The 32-year-old is from one of those families. She told The Washington Post that she was raped by Dixit at the sect’s headquarters in June 2000, while taking a summer religion course as a teenager. Then, three years later, she said, her parents “surrendered” her youngest sister to the sect. Since then, the woman has tried repeatedly to contact her sister, now 25, and have her released.
“I would never have told anyone all this if my sister wasn’t in there,” she said.
The Washington Post does not identify victims of sexual assault, and the 32-year-old’s identity is also shielded by Indian law protecting rape victims.
The sect issued a statement saying the investigation was part of a “defamatory campaign.” It says “no activity detrimental to female devotees or to any other members of the society is conducted in the Vidyalaya.”
Dixit’s whereabouts are currently unknown. It was not possible to further corroborate the woman’s story.
Dixit claims to be an incarnation of, among others, the Hindu god Krishna, who according to myth has 16,000 wives. Swati Maliwal, chairwoman of Delhi’s government agency for women’s affairs, said that investigators found 200 women and girls in miserable conditions.
“The ashram has been running illegal activities,” said Maliwal. She said investigators found dizzyness-inducing substances and unprescribed medicines which may have been used to drug and pacify women. She also said religious texts found during a raid instruct women to “surrender” their bodies to Dixit.
Maliwal accompanied police on the December 19 raid on one of AVV’s flagship ashrams in a rundown northwest Delhi neighborhood. She described the main building as a “fortress,” with multiple locked gates and barbed wire enclosing residents. She recounted finding a room full of medicines, unlabelled substances and syringes, suitcases full of devotional letters written by the sect’s women to Dixit, as well as books and posters that describe Dixit as a god.
“All the girls appeared to be in a trance,” Maliwal said.
Authorities removed 41 minors from the facility. Court documents say that at least 168 adult women remain at the site, and 25 adult men live in an annex.
Investigators said in court documents that the women lived in “animal-like conditions” and many were in poor health and appeared to be under the influence of narcotics.
Maliwal said ashram workers told investigators that the adult women had chosen to stay on the sect’s properties. The court’s order to search the premises did not give investigators the authority to remove adults without their consent, she said.
Two days after the initial raid, the sect’s lawyer brought the 32-year-old woman’s sister to court on the instructions of a judge.
It was a highly charged moment.
The sisters had not seen each other since 2007, and their last meeting had been closely supervised by the sect’s senior followers, according to the older sibling.
She described her joy at seeing her younger sister . “I asked her, can I hug you? And I stuck to her. I couldn’t stop crying,” she said.
And then, the younger woman returned to the sect.