For the phenomenally influential religious guru, Asaram Bapu, his 37-year-long spiritual career had never been a cakewalk and the four mysterious deaths in his ashramss here and in Madhya Pradesh and the public ire he has been courting are only the latest that he hopes to shrug off.

His spiritual domain is spread across 300 ashrams throughout India, as also in the US, with lakhs of his followers and admirers flooding his commune with funds. Sixty-seven-year-old Bapu has even delivered a speech at the parliament of world religions.

Few controversies connected with his ashrams have invited media attention the way the deaths of four children in his two ashrams — in Ahmedabad and Chhindwara — did in just one month. His ashram, in both the cases, is facing serious problems, with investigators finally getting down to grilling inmates of the ashrams in connection with the deaths.

Asaram Bapu may not have had to look back ever since he set up his first kutia or hutment in Motera village here in 1971, but the path had all along been strewn with scandals.

Sindh-born Asaram, who had migrated to Ahmedabad with his parents during Partition, is facing about dozen-odd cases at different places — all of them pertaining to alleged land grabbing by his Sant Asaram Bapu Trust. One of the villagers in Motera, Ashok Thakore, has moved the court to get back five acres of his family’s land allegedly grabbed by the ashram. According to Thakore, the land is situated adjoining the ashram and was used for erecting tents on the Guru Purnima day. Permission to this effect was given by his father to the ashram. After his father’s death, the ashram grabbed it by saying that Thakore’s father had ‘gifted’ it to the ashram. However, the ashram has not been able to substantiate its claim with proofs.

In another case, Anil Vyas, a farmer from Jehangirpura village near Surat, where the ashram is facing several allegations of land grabbing, is fighting a prolonged battle for recovery of his 34,400 square metres of prime land from the ashram. According to Vyas, despite the fact that the ashram’s claim over the land was challenged in the court, the state Government regularised the unauthorised encroachment on January 24, 1997. However, the Gujarat High Court on December 8, 2006, held the regularisation illegal and decreed in favour of the farmer. The Ashram then appealed to the Division Bench against the order.

A Delhi-based widow, Sudarshan Kumari, is also fighting a legal battle against Asaram Bapu whose Trust, she alleges, had fraudulently got some papers signed by her. The paper later turned out to be a ‘gift deed’ to the ashram. The documents say that she has gifted the ground floor of her house in Rajouri Garden, New Delhi, to the ashram. According to her complaint, on July 6, 2000, on the pretext of taking her to Asaram satsang, she was taken to the office of Sub Registrar in Janakpuri, New Delhi. One of the inmates of the ashram, identified as Mani Kaka, hypnotised her and made her sign a number of documents, without allowing her to go through the content. The other person who signed the papers there, according to her, was Narayan Swamy, son of Asaram Bapu. She came to know about the gift deed when officials from the Municipal Committee of Delhi came to confirm it.

The ashram authorities at Rajokri village, near Gurgaon, have allegedly forged documents pertaining to the registration of the ashram. Bhagwani Devi, a resident of Rajokri, has also approached the Delhi High Court levelling allegations of land grabbing against Asaram’s Rajokri ashram.

Even Government agencies have levelled allegations of land grabbing against Asaram’s Trust. A few months ago, the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts (BSBRT) had served a notice to the Trust’s headquarters in Ahmedabad, asking it to vacate a land belonging to BSBRT, worth Rs 80 crore. And in April 2007, a retired judge of the Patna High Court had filed a criminal complaint in Kadamkuan police station, Patna, alleging grabbing of his land by Asaram Bapu and others.

In Ratlam, Asaram’s Trust had to vacate a piece of land after a prolonged litigation. In January 2007, power theft amounting to Rs 4.7 lakh was detected from his Rajkot ashram.

Despite all these cases and allegations, Asaram Bapu’s popularity is on the rise — particularly among the ruling party politicians in the state. “It is due to the clout of Asaram that no criminal case was registered against any of his ashram-members nor was anyone from the ashram arrested after the two boys of his gurukuls died under mysterious circumstances,” said a rebel BJP leader, requesting anonymity.

The popularity of Asaram can be gauged from the fact that his photographs can be spotted in every government office across the state and even state transport corporation’s buses display his photos and messages.

When the Gujarat Government in 2005 decided to rejuvenate the Saraswati river by filling long tracts of land considered to be the vestiges of the mythical river at Sidhpur town in Mehsana district, Asaram Bapu was the chief guest at the launch of the project. Though there are other religious leaders in the state, inviting him to such a high-profile programme as the chief guest explains the popularity of the man among the ruling party.

Again, when the state Government temporarily launched Vande Gujarat TV channel, telecasting its developmental achievements on the eve of December 2007 Assembly polls, the channel regularly carried footages of Asaram Bapu.

This explains the clout of Asaram Bapu whose religious movement has taken the shape of a cult, having followers in every section of the society. With his influence growing, there are many politicians, including Minister of State for Home Amit Shah, visiting his ashram regularly.

The Nowhere Children

Human trafficking is the third largest illicit industry after arms and drugs. Neha Dixit went undercover to meet the traffickers and the young victims sold by their own families to pimps and placement agents

Photo: SALMAN USAMNI

• Every Sunday, 17-year-old Rita was forced into sex with at least 50 men.

• Vijay was still in the womb when his mother fixed the price he was sold at.

• Seven-year-old Parul’s meals were thrown into a toilet bowl. She had no choice but to eat.

• Priyanka was nine when she was shot in the thigh for eating too much.

• Preeti has not been allowed outdoors since she was eight. It’s been 15 years.

• Two months into their marriage, 14- year-old Puja’s husband began pimping her to his friends.

EVEN THOUGH India’s poverty rate has dropped from 60 to 42 percent according to the World Bank, the number of Indians scraping by on less than Rs 60 a day is at an astronomical 467 million. That hunger has almost half the Indian population in its grip is not all that this figure implies. Among huge swathes of India’s poor, life is little more than a bare, often brutalised attempt at staying alive, a struggle in many cases hijacked by human trafficking, deemed by the United Nations the world’s third-largest illicit industry, after arms and drugs. Extreme poverty and the low premium traditionally placed on female lives sees thousands of girls, most of them more children than women, sold into unmitigated hell by family members and acquaintances. As we witnessed at close range during a three-month investigation, the grievous trade in human lives is plied not only in the country’s brothels, but in urban domestic placement agencies and rural bride markets as well.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: TORTURE AND DOMESTIC SERVITUDE

PM Nair’s Trafficking in Women and Children in India indicates that nearly 75 percent of the victims of trafficking are tricked into it by the promise of a lucrative job.

Photo: SALMAN USMANI

Transit area A victim sits amidst her luggage in a cramped hostel room Photo: SALMAN USAMNI

With the nuclear family fast becoming the norm among the urban middle-toupper classes, the demand for the live-in maid servant (euphemism: ‘domestic help’) has exponentially risen. In response, domestic placement agencies have mushroomed across the country’s metros. Posing as the mother of a three-year-old, we visited several such agencies in Delhi and saw at first hand how easily minor girls are brought from villages in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh to live under extreme exploitation, first at the placement agency’s ‘transit area’, and then at the employer’s house.

Husband and wife Kiranjeet and Julie, known only by their first names, are traffickers from Alipore Dwar, West Bengal. In trade jargon, they are known as ‘johns’: they supply placement agencies with girls from the villages at commissions ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 10,000 per girl. we got Kiranjeet talking about his profession.

Reporter: How do you bring the girls to Delhi?

Kiranjeet: By the Mahananda train…not the Northeast Express because it comes via Guwahati and there is a lot of checking there. The Mahananda train comes to the station directly, which is why we use it.

Reporter: What do you tell the girls?

Kiranjeet: I tell them there are a lot of employment opportunities in Delhi and good money also…I don’t give them too many details…The placement agent here in Delhi gives me Rs 2,500 for each girl I get… In the train, the police come on their rounds at night. If they find a number of girls being taken, they ask for money.

Reporter: They take money for bringing girls?

Kiranjeet: Yes. They take Rs 200 per girl.

KIRANJEET AND JULIE, Traffickers

ANIL, Domestic placement agent

JHARNA, Trafficker

ONCE IN the city, the girls are kept in so-called hostels until the placement agent finds them an employer. The ‘hostel’, as we found on visits to many such establishments, is no more than a single room where several girls, all in the 8 to16 age group, are claustrophobically packed together in conditions unhygienic in the extreme. When we asked these girls who they were and where they were from, their unvarying answer was that they were the placement agents’ relatives — the reply they are told to give on arrival, to avoid attracting the attention of the police. The transit period involves doing the placement agent’s household work and, frequently, submitting to sexual molestation and assault.

Smita, now 16, was one of four girls brought in June 2005 from their village in Jharkhand by an acquaintance of her father to a placement agency in Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi. There, while no employment came her way, she found the placement agent continually harassing her for massages. She refused. Three months later, the agent punished her with rape. “I ran away that very day, and stayed on the streets for the next two days. I had no money and I didn’t know any Hindi.” An NGO, Domestic Workers’ Forum, Chetnalaya, finally came to her aid, but her parents refused to take her back because she had been raped, leaving her nowhere to turn but the rescue home where she still lives. A case was registered last year against the placement agent; he, however, is absconding.

WHEN WE went looking for a babysitter to Phoolchand Placement Agency in South Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar, six or seven girls between the ages of 10 and 14 were displayed before us like mannequins in a shop window. The placement agent told us he would charge a commission both from us and the girl, depending on whether she was untrained (a firsttimer), semi-trained (had worked before) or fully trained. The fee, accordingly, ranges from Rs 6,500 to Rs 10,000.

Reporter:I had a talk on the phone about a small girl for babysitting.

Agent:Will be done. Call the girls. (A few girls enter.)

Reporter: I want this one. What is your name?

Girl: Shilpi.

Reporter: How old are you?

Shilpi: Twelve.

Reporter: Have you worked before?

Shilpi: Yes. In Noida. For two years.

Reporter: Okay. I’ll take this one.

Agent: Her mother will come in sometime. Talk to her.

Tortured Priyanka’s injured forehead (above) and acid burnt hands (below)

The girl’s monthly wage is fixed at Rs 3,000. The agent tells us there will be an 11-month contract and the girl will get two off-days a month. But, when we protest that we cannot allow leave, we are told she’ll work with no offs for an extra month’s salary. After a while, Shilpi’s mother, Jharna arrives.

Reporter: Is this your daughter?

Jharna: Yes.

Reporter: What do you do?

Jharna: I get girls from the village and supply them to placement agents in Delhi.

Reporter: Where is your village?

Jharna: Between Siliguri and Kishangarh. It’s called Darkula.

Reporter:My sister also needs a small girl like her. Can you get me one?

Jharna: See, there’s a problem in bringing minor girls because of the police check here. There’s no problem sending one’s own daughter. Then nobody can ask me anything.

While one remains unsure whether Jharna is Shilpi’s actual mother, the interaction reveals one of the key techniques johns use when trafficking minor girls.

The placement agent also insisted that Shilpi’s wages be paid by cheque into the agent’s bank account. A façade that promises security but means exactly the opposite.

Latika Das from Alipore Dwaar arrived in Delhi in January 2005. Illiterate, a complete stranger to city life and without a soul she knew, it was no surprise that the 14-year-old could not manage to open a bank account. She turned to Praveen, her placement agency owner, who said she could deposit her money into his account. A year of hard labour in domestic service netted her Rs 12,000, collected in Praveen’s name. Says Latika, “When I asked him to give me my money and send me home, he refused. When I insisted, he raped me and told me that if I complained, he would get me arrested.” Fearing the legal repercussions Praveen could cause her to incur, Latika agreed to work at two different places for the next two years, during which she had no contact with her parents. Befriended by NGO Prayaas, Latika registered a case this May against Praveen, who now owes her Rs 36,000. He, however, is absconding. Speaking from a rescue home, she tells us, “I can’t go back to my parents till I get my money. How will I tell them about what I went through here?”

FORCED LABOUR, exploitation, fraud and sexual assault — Latika and Smita faced all these at the hands of the men who were supposed to get them work. Once work is found, however, life can descend into nightmare. Geeta, Priyanka and Parul were 12, 9 and 7 respectively when they were sent to work at the house of Manish and Ritu Gupta in Faridabad, Haryana, in January 2006. Priyanka and Parul would wash the clothes and manage the household cleaning (which included scrubbing the washrooms barehanded with acid), and Geeta would do the kitchen work. By the girls’ account, punishment in the Gupta household for slip-ups at work was nothing if not sadistic. Being locked into a wet bathroom on winter nights was perhaps the mildest. Beatings with dumbbells and cricket bats were common; the children would be gagged so their screams would not be heard. “When we did not finish our work on time,” says Parul, “Madam (Ritu Gupta) would throw our food into the commode from where we picked it up to eat.” During the two years the children worked for the Guptas, they neither got any money nor were they allowed to visit their homes. Says Geeta, “I was desperate to call my parents, and I once became adamant about it. She (Ritu Gupta) snatched the paper on which I had the number, put chillies in my eyes and tied me naked to the kitchen door. She did not give me food for the next five or six days.” Geeta says Manish Gupta attempted to rape her several times. He also shot Priyanka in the thigh with an airgun, apparently because he thought she ate too much. “They did not even call a doctor after that,” Priyanka says. Manish Gupta is an architect; his wife is what is commonly referred to as an ‘educated’ woman.

The three girls were rescued in December 2007, when a neighbour informed a local NGO, Shakti Vahini. Manish Gupta and his wife managed bail the same day; they evaded our attempts to contact them. The three children they brutalised wait in a rescue home in Sonipat in Haryana for their case to close so they can return home. Says Priyanka, “More than these people, I am angry at my brother who brought me from Chhattisgarh and dumped me here.” Gita’s response is impassioned. The Bengali girl speaks in the Haryanavi accent she has acquired during her stay in the rescue home. “I want to kill them both, I want them to suffer exactly what they did to us.” Parul, the youngest and the most traumatised, has only one reply to all questions: “I want to go home to my parents and my brother, then I will tell you everything.”

Gita, Priyanka and Parul did at least find a way out of the hell they had been left in. Not Preeti, 23, who has worked at the house of KC Dutt — a resident of the Railway Colony off the capital’s Lodhi Road — since she was eight. Brought from West Bengal by her uncle and sold to a placement agency, Preeti has not left the Dutts’ house once in the 15 years she has been here. Her years in the house have not only silenced her, but have left her with a pervasive inability to trust anyone she meets. This includes her sister, who found her here after years of searching. When we visited the Dutts, they refused to let her out. The only contact she was allowed with us was through a small window. All the while, as we tried to coax her to talk, not once did she lift her head to look us in the eye. All she said was “I don’t want to go back,” the same response her sister says she gave two years ago when told her father had died of the trauma of not being able to locate her for 13 years. She has always been spotted in the same clothes with injury marks all over her face and body. How she got them, she never tells.

TERROR OF the employer and the placement agent and of the social and financial consequences of returning home keep hundreds of thousands of girls and women silent about the torture and humiliation they daily suffer. The National Commission for Women (NCW) receives at least eight cases every day from across the country of the murder of housemaids, says NCW member Manju Snehlata Hembrom. “When the girls become pregnant after they are raped, the employers kill them and claim they committed suicide,” she says.

Sister Leona, co-ordinator, Domestic Workers Forum, Chetnalaya, points out the chief hurdle in tracking the abuse of domestic servants. “There is absolutely no record of the number of girls that are brought from the villages to these agencies, nor is there any record of the number of agencies in the country.” Even the registration certificates that the placement agents show employers, under the Indian Partnership Act, are false because the practice is altogether illegal.

The Domestic Labour Bill has been sent to Parliament and, according to Hembrom, will take at least eight months to pass. Till it becomes law, it will remain next to impossible to assess the magnitude of this kind of trafficking or to formulate a domestic workers’ database, not just for policy makers and social workers but for parents trying to track children they once sent out to earn and who are now lost forever.

THE SEX TRADE: NO EXITS ON GB ROAD

A report by the United Nations Centre for Development and Population Activities indicates that approximately 200 girls and women in India enter sex work every day. More than 160 are coerced into it.

ABDUL, Pimp, GB Road

SONIA, Madam

RANI, former sex worker

For ages, the commercial sex trade has been the chief destination for trafficked girls. According to a report by the Ministry for Women and Child Development, India has nearly 2.5 million prostitutes in nearly 300,000 brothels in 1,100 red-light areas across the country.

RITA KAMBDE was kidnapped from her home in Latur, Maharashtra, in 1997 and sold for Rs 3,000 to a brothel on GB Road, Delhi’s red-light locality. She was then 17. When she refused to sleep with customers, she was thrown into a tiny room where, she says, there were at least a 100 other girls. Locked up for 20 days, they were neither given food nor even allowed to leave to defecate. Periodically, the brothel bahadurs — the term used for the husbands of the madams, the women heading the brothel — would pick off a girl to rape before the rest to terrorise them. At other times, Rita says, chilli powder would be applied to the girls’ vaginas to torture them into consent.

When Rita finally agreed, she was made to sleep with 20 to 30 customers a day and with 50 customers on Sundays. When she mustered the courage to say she wanted out, the brothel madam told her to repay the sum she was bought for. Says Rita, “How could I have paid her anything? I was never given any money, just food and clothes.” Nine years later, Rita contracted tuberculosis and managed to escape when she was taken to hospital for treatment. She now works as a children’s helpline co-ordinator. Her case has been in court for two years. She has AIDS and just two or three years to live.

Posing as a research scholar, the reporter visited GB Road and met Abdul, a pimp.

Reporter: Since when have you been here?

Abdul: 1956.

Reporter: You must know a lot about the area. How much were girls sold for then?

Abdul: At that time, for anywhere between Rs 20,000 to 50,000.

Reporter: What about now?

Abdul: Now it’s much higher.

Reporter: Who brings these girls here?

Abdul: Parents, brothers…

Reporter: And the police must also ask for a commission?

Abdul: Is it possible without their commission?

Reporter: They must know that parents bring the girls?

Abdul: Yes. In fact, the police themselves facilitate a sale every 10 to 15 days.

Situated across from New Delhi Railway Station, the brothels of GB Road occupy the upper floors of Asia’s largest spare parts

market. A maze of narrow, dark passageways and staircases, filled with paan stains and cigarette smoke and guarded by bahadurs at every exit, lead to the brothels. It is a labyrinth impossible to navigate for anyone attempting to escape.

We first go to brothel no. 64, which we are told is the best in the area. When we step into the display room, we find faircomplexioned minor girls from Nepal and the Northeast, dressed in Western outfits and accompanied by middleaged, well-to-do men drooling over them as they await a ‘room’. These socalled rooms are little more than wall cupboards, not even three feet deep, their shelves replaced by a single plank. Makeshift arrangements to accommodate the maximum customers at any given time, each ‘room’ has a mattress but no fan, ventilation or light. Rarely cleaned, these cramped quarters are, naturally, the automatic breeding ground for infection.

The popularity of brothel 64 indicates that a large number of minor girls are available here, especially virgins. Since sections of our culture still subscribe to the myth that intercourse with a virgin cures sexual dysfunction, the demand for virgins is high, the younger the better. The looks and complexion of the girls also play a great part in deciding the rates they are sold at.

AS WE leave, we meet Rani, nearing 40, a prisoner of the trade for over three decades. Rani was eight when she was kidnapped from a village in Siliguri, West Bengal, and sold to a brothel in Delhi. Twenty-five years later, her abused body was no longer attractive to customers; her dark complexion also impeded her graduating to the status of madam, a trajectory sex workers commonly follow. One day, she says, she came down with an unspecified illness; it took the brothel owners no time to throw her out. In the 25 years she had lived in the brothel, Rani had never once been paid. “I was completely stranded,” she says. “I didn’t have a single penny.” She saw hope only in her village; she managed somehow to put the money together for the return. “My mother wept the moment she saw me. She was so happy I had come home. But when my father saw me, he kicked me out on the spot. He said I would bring him a bad name if people found out where I’d been all these years. I was forced to return. Sometimes, I wonder if he’d have done the same if I’d come back with money. Was it my fault I was kidnapped?”

When she returned, Rani was fortunate in being able to find a job with Shakti Vahini, an NGO that helps rescue trafficked victims. The money she earns provides her enough to raise her two daughters. That is not the usual fate of most of the flesh industry’s castoffs, many of whom end their days begging in the dark staircases that lead to the brothels.

IN 2007, 15-year-old Puja Singh’s father married her to Pratap, 20, in Begu Sarai, Bihar. After the wedding, her husband brought her to a village near Bahadurgarh in Haryana and, two months later, began inviting his friends in to sleep with her. When Puja resisted, he told her she was his property, for her father had sold her to him for Rs 3,000. Shocked, Puja plotted her escape and was able to run away. She lives now in Nari Sadan, a rescue home in Rohtak, Haryana. Determined not to go home, she has no idea what she is to do now. Tears and anger burst from her as she speaks. “My father sold me, my husband turned me into a prostitute, I am not even educated, you tell me what to do.”

Back at GB Road, at brothel no. 70, we meet Sonia, the ‘deputy madam’, who confirms the view that the most common sources of girls for the brothels are their own relatives.

Reporter: Where do the girls come from?

Sonia: See, earlier the pimps would get them but now the mothers themselves bring them here. Girls from Calcutta, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh…After selling them, they come back every two or three months to collect their share of their daughter’s earnings.

Reporter: The pimps used to get the girls?

Sonia: Yes. Pimps made a lot of money earlier. But now their method has changed. They pretend to fall in love with the girls, promise them marriage and convince them to elope. Then they sell them here. When traffickers come here, they come disguised as customers and ask to take them out. Once they do so, they sell them at some other brothel.

Reporter: How many times is a girl sold?

Sonia: Don’t ask. There this girl in brothel no. 71 who married her pimp. He promised to take her out, but he now forces her to sleep with customers and lives on that money.

Reporter: Do the police know?

Sonia:What will the police do? They get their commission every month.

When we speak to Bala Sharma, SHO of the Kamla Market police station under which GB Road falls, all she tells us is, “To the best of my knowledge, there are no minor girls in the area and no girls have been sold here since I took charge.”

Rescue does not always guarantee release, for traffickers and brothel owners keep close tabs on the girls. Says Bharti Sharma, chairperson, Nirmal Chhaya, a rescue home for girls in Tihar Jail, “Traffickers often disguise themselves as relatives of the rescued girls. That is why we don’t allow the girls to go with anyone but their parents. We ask for pictures and other details before we hand the girls over.”

But even these precautionary measures are not always adequate to the purpose. Jaswanti, who runs the Rohtak rescue home, Nari Sadan, tells of how a couple once came with photographs, birth certificate and other such documents and claimed that one of the girls at the home was their daughter. They said the girl, then 16, had been trafficked when she was five; now that she had been rescued, they wanted to take her home, they said. All formalities completed, the girl was allowed to leave. Two days later, Jaswanti got to know that the parents were in a nearby locality, forcibly marrying their new-found daughter to a 50- year-old man. “I rushed to the place with the police and rescued her,” says Jaswanti.

SAAT PHERE: SEVEN CIRCLES OF HELL

Despite the Pre-Natal Diagnostics Test Act, which has banned foetal sex determination since 1994, nine lakh unborn girl children are aborted in India each year, as per official statistics.

Caught Rana Suraj Mal (centre) who sold Savita into marriage PHOTO: TRILOCHAN S. KALRA

The desperation for a son has left states like Haryana and Punjab with some of the worst sex ratios in the country: 861 women per 1,000 men for Haryana and 876 women per 1,000 men in Punjab. Depleted of their women, states like these resort to procuring girls sold as sexual brides from villages in Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam and West Bengal.

Life was never easy for Sita, a 16-year-old from Punjab’s Murinda village. The combined incomes of her father, a truck driver, and her mother, a domestic help, were insufficient to support their family of five. Sita followed her mother into domestic service for a few months when she was 14, but it was still not enough and she was soon handed over to a ‘dera’ in Fatiabad. A police raid shortly thereafter got her out, but left her in the custody of the Nari Niketan, Karnal, a dismally corrupt institution that did not always take the trouble to provide its inmates food and water. Sita fled in less than a year. At a bus stop in Panipat, another Haryana small town, she fell into the clutches of Jasbir, a motorcycle mechanic, who raped her, then promised her marriage and finally left her last year at the town’s Bal Bhawan Ashram. In April, Amarjeet, the Ashram co-ordinator, not only raped her but also got a false birth certificate made in her name, changing her year of birth from 1993 to 1990, to show her as being of the age of consent. He later sold her into marriage with 25-year-old Sanjay Verma, a glass factory worker in Gurgaon, Haryana, for Rs 36,000.

Kept as a household drudge, Sita was driven out by Sanjay’s extended family and sent packing in a month. Now in the care of the BBD Balashram, an NGO-run rescue home in Karnal, Sita is a shattered human being, wrecked even before she left her teens. Says Balashram founder PR Nath, “In one week alone, she tried to hang herself twice, attacked other girls with a kitchen knife and tried to set the ashram on fire. There is no counsellor locally we can take her to.” A case has been filed against Sanjay, Amarjeet and Jasbir, but that will take its own lengthy course. Sita is currently in hospital, recuperating with no psychological help at hand. When we asked her if she wanted to go back to her parents, she could only reply, “If I go back now, my father will kill me.”

This is the inflexible code that binds the lives of innumerable girls in shelter homes across the country — once a social taboo is broken, there is no going back, no matter that it is no fault of the girl at all. A trafficker told us that when girls from the brothels go back to their villages, they are called ‘Delhi-returned’ and are considered impure. As with Rani, parents succumb to societal pressure and reject them.

THE STORY of 14-year-old Jyoti, from Durgapur in West Bengal, is a little different. One of a family of five daughters, Jyoti did not find getting sold into marriage to 40-year-old BD Singh a surprise — her father was no more, her mother could find no work and the

Photo: TRILOCHAN S. KALRA

marriage brought the family Rs 15,000. What followed, however, was a shock. Married in Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh last October — “just before Durga Puja,” Jyoti says — the girl soon discovered her newly-wed husband was not only already married, but also had four daughters from his first wife. “She used to beat me and make me do all the housework. She would say she’d see to it I’d never give birth to a boy.” That, she finally understood, was why Singh, a brick kiln worker, had married her: the quest for a male heir. In March, Jyoti ran away; the police caught up with her and lodged her in the Karnal Nari Niketan, which was then plagued with a contagious skin disease. The ordeal ended when she was transferred to another rescue home. “I don’t want to see my mother’s face,” Jyoti now says. “Don’t send me home. I want to become a teacher and take care of myself.”

Twelve-year-old Savita from Koochbihar in Assam has perhaps not got off so relatively lightly. With both her father and brother mentally retarded, her mother sent her away three months ago with Rana Suraj Mal, a man from her village who worked as a tailor in Bahadurgarh, Haryana. Says Mal’s neighbour Asha, “Savita would come running to us, crying. He would rape her, make her do all the work at home.” Suraj Mal has been arrested and has confessed to selling Savita into marriage for a sum he did not disclose. Savita, however, is missing; the search for her is still on.

Says Sunil Singh, co-ordinator, Rahi Foundation, a Lucknow-based NGO that works for women’s empowerment, “These girls get no social acceptability all their lives. Treated as commodities, they are reduced to sexual brides, exploited in the most heinous manner.” Most times, the girls do not even understand the language their husbands speak. Despised by the community they are forced to live in, they have nowhere to turn, for the magnitude of their tragedy is well-hidden behind the sacrosanct matrimonial guise.

ADVANCE BOOKING: SELLING THE UNBORN

SAVITRI, Buyer

KAMLESH, Seller

It is not girls alone who are trafficked; the Indian hunger for a male child will do deals in boys as well. This is the story of 35-year-old Kamlesh, from Asandh, Haryana. On July 28 this year, Kamlesh sold her fifth child, Vijay, the day he was born. Three months before that, her husband had raped their daughter and thrown her onto the railway tracks near their home, after her slitting her throat numerous times. He is in jail now; Kamlesh says she has told the police to hang him. “I am thinking of giving away my other children too,” she says.

Kamlesh: The only money I get is on the days when I get work as a daily wage labourer. The rest of the time, I have to beg my neighbours for food. My children are dying of hunger. That is why I sold my son.

Reporter: How much did they pay you?

Kamlesh: Rs 3,000. Posing as adoption agency officials, we met Savitri and Ramdev, the couple from Madhubani, Bihar, who bought Vikas. What they told us was astounding.

Reporter: How did you come to know about Vijay?

Ramdev: Inderdev, my elder brother, negotiated it all. He fixed it up a year ago.

Reporter: As in, when Kamlesh was still pregnant?

Ramdev: Yes. Inderdev told us she wanted to sell the child.

Reporter: Did you give her anything when she was pregnant?

Ramdev: No money, just some groceries.

Reporter: She told us she spent the money you paid her on treatment for her daughter.

Ramdev: Yes. We paid her Rs 5,000- 6,000. We talked with her when she was pregnant and it was decided that if she had a boy, I would take him. When this boy was born, a lot of people came to take him. From places like Ambala and Panipat. They were offering sums as high as Rs 30,000 for him. Then we told her she should give him to us, since she had promised us beforehand.

Reporter: So she gave him to you because you had booked him when she was pregnant?

Ramdev: Yes. Otherwise that man from Ambala would surely have taken this boy away.

OUTLASTING TRAUMA: WHITHER REHABILITATION?

Photo: SALMAN USMANI

According to a recent report by the National Human Rights Commission, an average of 22,480 women and 44,476 children are reported missing in India each year. Of these, a yearly average of 5,452 women and 11,008 children are never traced. Another report, Action Research on Trafficking in Women and Children in India, 2002-2003, indicates that many of the missing are not really missing but are instead trafficked.

IF THEIR parents do not farm them out, extreme poverty and large families often compel girls to leave home on their own and come to the cities, looking for work. To take the case of West Bengal, the maximum number of trafficking victims from the state are girls from the tea gardens. A hundred tea gardens have closed down over the last five years, leaving at least 17,000 tea garden workers jobless; Bengal employs three-fourths of those in the tea industry. Says Vasudev Banerjee, chairman, Tea Board of India, “Most of the plantation workers had migrated from Chota Nagpur to Bengal, over a hundred years ago. They have no land in Bengal and no skills apart from plucking leaves. With the closure, they are left with no options and nowhere to go.” Moreover, according to official figures, at least 54 percent of the tea plantation workers are women. With the West Bengal government’s monthly Rs 750 stipend to the laid-off being nowhere near adequate, these women migrate looking for jobs and many end up as victims of human trafficking.

Digambar, a co-ordinator with Nedan, an NGO that works on human trafficking in the Northeast, adds a different spin to the predicament. Describing the state of affairs in Assam, he says, “Due to the ethnic violence between the Bodos and the tribals, hundreds of people took shelter in refugee camps. Many still live there and, with no access to their traditional livelihoods, are more than willing to send their children to work. These children fall prey to trafficking.”

Girls from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh’s deeply impoverished tribal areas are also easy targets. Says Manju Hembrom, “For years, the tribals have been caught in the web of the money lenders, and when they can’t repay their debts, parents send daughters to the cities to earn money, not realising they may never come back.” Similar stories from among farmers in Maharashtra’s suicide country, Vidharbha, have also been reported over the last few years.

DELHI-BASED SOCIAL activist Rishikant, 32, has rescued more than a thousand girls over the last ten years. A sex worker once told him his phone number was scribbled on an AIDS awareness poster on GB Road, from where he gets the most calls for rescue. “I never switch off my phone,” he says. “I can’t morally afford to.” In the course of the week, Rishikant receives dozens of text messages, faxes and post cards, each a stark vignette of desperation, violence and sorrow. When rescued, the girls often do not even know the name of the place they belong to. “I once brought in an eight-year-old who had no idea of where her home was,” Rishi says. “I tracked down her village by the dialect of a song she would often sing. But I have now slowed down the process of rescuing because over the years I have realised I only end up saving them from one hell and putting them into other.”

Rishikant is referring to the rescue homes that are the only places girls from the brothels can go to. Nirmal Chhaya’s Bharti Sharma admits that the girls brought to the homes — almost all of them illiterate and many of them teenagers or younger — do not receive any counselling or medical attention, despite the relentless trauma they have been through. With their psyches shattered, no skills to fall back on and their parents refusing to let them back home, many girls end up locked into the rescue homes’ section for the mentally disturbed, whether they qualify for being there or not.

Even though the Ministry of Women and Child Development launched the Ujjawala Scheme in December 2007 for the rehabilitation of trafficking victims, it has found takers in only a few states and even fewer NGOs have got permission to pitch in. It is this indifference, bland and merciless, that, Rishikant says, has made him vow to never shake hands with any bureaucrat or minister.

A few weeks back, P.Chidambaram, the home minister, asked Delhi-ites to mend their ways before the Commonwealth Games. “We must behave as citizens of a big, good international city,” he said. Clearly, Delhi Police thought it was not included. Joel Elliott, an award-winning American freelance journalist, working as a staff writer at Caravan magazine in Delhi since May this year, has  charged “six to seven hours of beating and torture” by Delhi Police, for intervening while the cops were thrashing another man. Delhi Police, on its part, insists that Elliot was drunk, trying to steal a taxi, and had beaten up a couple of police men and an elderly driver. Even if we go by the Delhi Police version, what  does it say about the rule of law in India’s capital city and the way its police metes out instant justice? Following is the full text of the signed statement of Joel Elliott about the night of Oct. 5 and the morning of Oct. 6.

 

Background:
I am a journalist working for The Caravan, a narrative journalism magazine run by Delhi Press. I also freelance for a number of publications, including The New York Times. The Christian Science Monitor. San Francisco Chronicle and Global Post. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from Toccoa Falls College in Georgia, USA. My work has won a number of state, regional and national awards in the United States.

Narrative:
On the evening of Oct 5, I visited the home of Kate Webb and Ryan Fletcher, two freelance journalist friends of mine who were flying out to London at 5 the next morning. My own flight, to the United States, would leave in a few days hence, and so we wanted l” spend one more evening together as we three would not see each other again for quite Some time. Their home is in Jangpura Extension, as is mine. We are separated by some six or seven blocks, perhaps eight.

I became tired sometime around 2 a.m. Oct 6, and set out on foot, atone, to my home As I was walking in the darkness, I came around the comer of a building and walked literally into the middle of an altercation between at least four Delhi Police Officers, in uniform, beating a person beside the street. As I had not been paying attention, one police officer’s baton struck me, perhaps by accident, while he was beating the other person on the ground. Startled. I shouted. When I realized what was happening to the person on the ground, I shouted again. The police officer closest to me turned and advanced, shouting something in a language I did not understand. I shouted back, saying they couldn’t just beat people in the street. In the middle of the exchange, the officer swung his baton and struck me in the left upper arm area and began to raise his baton to strike again. I struck him in the jaw, and as he reeled back, turned and fled, turning off of the way to my home, as the officers were in the way. They gave chase, but I had somewhat of head start, and it was quite dark, so I was able to evade their line of vision for a time. It took me a few moments to find my way back to a road that I recognized. The problem was that they could easily catch me in their mobile command post. I began searching for a hiding place, and the most obvious places were in the row of cars parked along the left hand side of the road. I slowed to a fast walk, trying door handles to see if one were unlocked. I was hoping I could hide inside one of the cars until the polite passed, since I was afraid they found me. Door after door I tried, to no avail. The last Car I tried was an Ambassador cab — I had been particularly hopeful about this car, because it had darkened windows. However, I had apparently chosen a car near Bhogal Marker that was parked next to a guard, or a driver, because someone came out of the shadows shouting. I tried to explain I wanted a hiding place, not to steal a car (after all my home was only five or six blocks away – why would I need a taxi?) But the man was shouting in a language I did not understand, and apparently did not understand me, either. His shouts alerted the police, who were already in pursuit, as was mentioned before, and they arrived quickly and surrounded me. Advancing quickly, they began beating me with their batons. In self-defense, I swung at, and connected, with a few of them, but I quickly went down beneath a rain of blows on my head, back, arms, thighs, shins, buttocks and ankles. The beating continued for some time after I had fallen.

They shackled my arms behind my back, so tight that to this date I have drastically reduced sensation in my left thumb. Then they shackled my ankles together and threw me bodily into the back of the mobile command vehicle. Three officers climbed into the rear compartment with me and resumed beating me, this time with their fists. They also slammed my face into the seat and into the floor, which action I was unable to resist, since my hands were shackled behind my back.

After some rime we arrived at what I later learned was the AIIMS Hospital. At the time, however. I was not aware of location, became the officers had continually slammed my head do»n and I was unable to see out of the windows for some time. They threw me from the rear of the truck and I landed on the asphalt hard, without being able to catch myself. Unable to walk, I found the skin being removed from my knees and lower body as the officers hoisted me up by my arms behind my back and dragged me into the hospital entry way. Again, at this point I had no way of knowing where I was; I believed I was in the police station. When a nurse emerged with a hypodermic needle, I began screaming for help and for someone to call the US Embassy. After the officers’ rough treatment of me, I was afraid of what the syringe contained As far as I knew. the woman was an employee of the polite department. No one explained to me in English what was happening. I struggled, the officers held me down, and I finally was forced to be injected by an unknown substance — one that later turned out to be a sedative. When the injection was complete, the officer again picked up my upper body and dragged me across ihe concrete floor and parking lot back lo the truck.

Once inside the truck, the three officers in the rear continued to strike mc in ihe fate and head as we rolled to the police station.

At ihe police station, the officers hauled me out of the rear of the truck and tossed me to the ground, still shackled. I began again streaming for someone to call the US Embassy to report this beating and continued torture. I lay like this for perhaps two hours.

After 15 or 20 minutes of my shouting for help, an officer came out and began kicking me, apparently angered by my calls for help. He did this one or two more times, as I still continued calling for help. After an hour or two had passed, several officers came out and dragged me into the police station, still scraping my lower body across the concrete. They threw me into a holding room with a concrete floor. I lay like this for perhaps a couple of hours, still shouting for someone to call the US Embassy.

Two officers came in two or three times and kicked me while I was lying on the floor, apparently to make me be quiet. In between these instances, they targeted the other person in the room, a young Indian man of perhaps 17 who had been sitting quietly near a table along the wall. One two or three occasion, two officers entered the room, and one held him down on the table while the other beat the soles of his feet with a baton. The young man screamed, but the beating went on and on

I am not sure whethcr this was the same young man I saw being beaten earlier in the morning.

Around 9 a.m., the polite asked for my street address and called for my flatmate to come and get me. At no point during the six or seven hours they had held me did they offer me any food or water. At no point did they offer me the Opportunity make a phone call. At no point until my release did they unshackle me. At no point did they contact the US Embassy, according to the Embassy itself. The police are required to notify the US Embassy the moment a foreigner is arrested.

My flatmate took me to the hospital for treatment. I was covered in blood from head to toe from the police beating. My pants, which were still on me. were torn to shreds, and covered in blood. My shirt had been torn from my body. The hospital staff, concerned about the gaping wound to the side of my head and blood clots in my right eye, combined with the massive bruising across the whole of my body, kept me at AIIMS Hospital for two days and one night. I received five stitches to my eyebrow

Conclusion:
I request a thorough inquiry into the six to seven hours of beating and torture I endured at the hands, feet and batons of Delhi Police. I request that the police officers responsible be removed ftom their positions

Further, I seek $500,000 US dollars in compensation for pain and suffering and mental anguish the Delhi Police inflicted upon me.

Date: October 8, 2009
Time: 4 p.m
Place: New Delhi

India address:
Second floor, N-31 B, Jungpura Extension, New Delhi

NEW YORK: Raj Rajaratnam, a Tamil-origin billionaire often described as the wealthiest Sri Lankan in the world, was on Friday arrested on charges

of being involved in a $20 million hedge fund insider trading scam, the largest such case in the US. A further twist to the already stunning case was provided by allegations that donations made by him to a Maryland-based charity were funnelled to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, possibly without his knowledge.

Two Indian Americans identified as Anil Kumar and Rajiv Goel (both 51) were also arrested on Friday, said Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Rajaratnam, 52, has been accused of conspiring with Intel Capital treasury department managing director Rajiv Goel and Anil Kumar, a director of McKinsey & Co. The alleged offenses took place over three years starting in January 2006.

Kumar allegedly profited from investments in Galleon, the $7-billion hedge fund founded by Rajararatnam. Goel is alleged to have received profitable trades in a personal account managed by Rajaratnam, the complaints said.

Investigators said they used court-approved telephone wire taps for the first time in a Wall Street insider trading case, sending shivers through the hedge fund industry which has traditionally picked up and shared trading tips to make big profits.

A second criminal complaint accused three other people — New Castle portfolio manager Danielle Chiesi, New Castle general partner Mark Kurland and Robert Moffat, a senior vice president in IBM — of insider trading crimes and earning millions of dollars in illegal profits. New Castle is a hedge fund which was a unit of Bear Stearns Asset Management before Bears Stearns collapsed in 2008, but is still in operation.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Rajaratnam was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in US whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Tamil Tigers.

Rajaratnam’s attorney Jim Walden said his client was innocent and would fight the insider-trading charges, the Journal said.

He also said the Tamil-origin billionaire had made charitable donations “to rebuild homes” destroyed by the devastating tsunami of 2004, but had no links to LTTE, it said.

The Journal’s report said that in a separate case, federal agents have alleged that money donated to a US charity called Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, or TRO USA, of Cumberland, Maryland, was funneled to the Tamil Tigers. The donors have not been charged with knowing that the money was being sent to the LTTE. The case was brought against Karunakaran Kandasamy, described by prosecutors as the head of the US branch of the LTTE.

Early on Friday evening, a US magistrate in New York said Rajaratnam may be released on a $100 million personal recognizance bond secured by $20 million in cash and property.

In a brief appearance, Rajaratnam sat in court with his arms folded. The judge restricted his travel to a radius of 110 miles from Manhattan and Rajaratnam, a citizen of both Sri Lanka and the US, surrendered travel documents.

A prosecutor argued that Rajaratnam was a flight risk, but his lawyer Jim Walden said: “The court’s going to learn there’s a lot more to this case. There is no way that this man is going to flee.”

All six accused in the case were charged with securities fraud and conspiracy in two criminal complaints filed in the US District Court in Manhattan. Kumar was permitted to be released on a $5 million bond, Kurland on a $3 million bond, and Moffat and Chiesi on a $2 million bond. In California, Goel posted $300,000 cash for bail.

The six were also charged in a separate civil complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC said the accused traded on insider information from 10 companies.

If convicted, all of them face imprisonment of up to 20 years, according to the indictment, which reads that the defendants “routinely received inside information directly or indirectly from insiders and provided it to each other for the purpose of trading based on the information”.

Noting that this should be a wakeup call for the Wall Street, Bharara — an Indian American recently appointed to this powerful post by US President Barack Obama — termed it as a decisive action against fraud on the Wall Street.

Asaram bapu has not even spared his own daughter for his sexual pleasures. Ajay shah’s wife is a regular visitor to asaram bapu’s ekaant waas. Number of girls have broke their silence of their emotional torture & emotional wounds are not healed yet.

Asaram bapu has number of associates who benefits in millions of dollars & write articles to promote asaram.
here are answers to some of the ways they try to distort the subject & break communal haromony. i have added my replies.

–> Why are saints who protect Hindu culture being demeaned?… ? … ?

Asaram is a hard core criminal not a saint. He is disguising as saint, and you promoting him as saint. We know him from years.
Check out details of his murders records & family assets snatching, family breaking & brainwashing at www.slavecult.com

–> Don’t you think this is a conspiracy to make hindus fight amongst themselves?

There is no conspiracy, Asaram portraying this as conspiracy so he can get away as politician that this is virodhi party’s work. His criminal record is well documented from years. court cases didn’t happened overnight, victims have been fighting them from years. They are well published in local newspapers & were on TV before. But Asaram crimes list is so big that when media went to check upon one of his crimes they got two extra with every crime reported. Look at the comment made by this paid F**er who is writing for asaram saying make hindu fight themselves ? Victims are Hindus people whose families you have broken are Hindus. Asaram is not hindu he has no religion he is kasai who brutally kills people for money & fame. & witnesses are number insiders who just got fed up of doing crimes for asaram.

–> Awake,Hindus! Just reflect about who the conspiracy could be….

See this note, This criminal trying to distort topic towards Christians. see how low asaram is , he is trying to divert the topic to unrest the communal harmony. This is rajniti. Look mother who is asking for her son to be back is hindu, the girl who is raped by asaram is hindu, father whose son asaram has murdered is hindu, But look at the PR campaign of asaram everywhere on net that this is conspiracy against hindu. Hindu’s are victims, mother is victims what Christianity has to do with it. asaram teaches nothing more just come work for me, recruit more people for me who can fight for me. Real face of asaram is exposed.

–> Who is managing the show behind curtains by controlling the media, thereby promoting inflighting amongst the hindus and destroying our culture?
Yeah , ok this is one more funny comment asaram makes. Blame media ? Asaram bought 20 minutes slot on Aajtak for crores, So who is controlling media Asaram paid huge money to channels not to show his victims stories rather show his advertisements of nautanki.

–> Is this is a conspiracy by anti-religious forces that convert hindus by force?
See the real face of asaram mentality in this , Any one bringing truth about asaram is anti religious ? people note Victims of asaram are more religious than asaram itself., this is why they trusted him but he exploited them raped them because we were hoping he is some sort of religious. but the fact is he is good tamashe wala who knew how to collect bheed junta. Criminal asaram filed a FIR against 25 people who left him after seeing his reality about 1 year ago and in FIR he said they have joined hands with SIMI. How low asaram is, and how pathetic people can be who believe this. Victims of asaram had been begging and pleading for justice on TV and in courts & look at the comment made above by this criminal diverting the topic to anti religious etc. this is real face of asaram.

–> Before the verdict of the court has been announced,who is creating such havoc about Sant Sri Asamraji Ashram?
This was another attempt when number of his past crimes came in limelight at once he didn’t lost the opportunity to cash it with Dr. Talwar case. How verdict of the court will ever come. FIR filed in Mumbai against narayan sindhi & bugger is running , didn’t go to police station rather stayed in Indore as hideout & went to meet CM of MP to help him crores of cruppers have been exchanged. after Two months police in Ahmedabad still trying to get permission for NARCO test of sadhaks whereas asaram told in font of public HANG ME TO DEATH IF ASHRAM PEOPLE DONE IT, but now when police want to do narco of two suspect asaram told them not to go for narco and provided them attorney as human right violation if narco done. why all victims who are saying they want to go do their narco but asaram didn’t surrendered himself for narco and didn’t even suspects undergo narco. All cases pending against asaram are from years because AJAY SHAH handles them he manipulates police & bribes the seniors and influences through BJP politicians who are behind asaram communal rajniti especially Modi & Advani.

–> Why are attempts being made to blemish the image of respected Sant Asaramji,Who has made such efforts to promote Hindu culture within the country and abroad and who is respected and worshipped by crores of disiciples?

It’s about bring the reality & real face of asaram with his dark black face in public, reality of criminal is out who distribute his pictures to innocent people & misguide them to treat him as god. see all innocent people fall in trap because we are Hindus & religious but Hindu culture is not the property of of narayan sindhi or his baap Asaram. Hindu culture is to respect your parents & do humanity for other, but asaram has taught murders looting of people property. What hindu culture is that Ajay Sharma counting cash money of crores for asaram & his widowed mother begging asaram to leave her son. hindu culture is well known to Hindus not to criminals like asaram. asaram is not the thekedaar of hindu culture our local mandir & pundits can teach us hindu culture very well.

–> Why is hatred being spread for sant Asaramji and his disciples within hindu society?
Hatred is not spread, people hate him because of his criminal activities, because of asaram’s un humane work of killing people, killing kids, taking sons & daughters away brainwashing them and making them slaves.

–> The fathers of children who were killed have declared, “We dont support any kind of bandth,we do not want violence and unreast.”

The father of children Mr. Vaghela i spoke to him personally & he said Narco should have been done immediately. he was duped by local BJP MLA who took him to Modi to break his fast. At that time Modi said inquiry will be ordered the fact came out now criminal doing inquiry themselves instead of putting criminals asaram & narayan sindhi behind bars they helping them to delay the inquiry. Father of parents are disgusted the way inquiry is done, they want case to be handed over to CBI even today. Till the time asaram & narayan sindhi are not arrested & they don’t undergo NARCO how can truth will come out. Over 50 murders in ashram are seen by ex inmates who ready to give their wtiness once CBI takes up the case. just wait & watch there is justice as judiciary is watching asaram, they have whole pile of cases from years against asaram.

Day before yesterday asaram had Shakti pradarshan rally in ahmedabd, how come he gets permsiion to do rally to show his gundagurdi but parents of dead children are demanding permission to do dharna peacefully with 10 people infornt of asaram ashram are denied permission. The true face of Asaram is out this is why his samiti are breaking up so much inner fighting is going on in ashrams that lot more people are leaving asaram and not supporting him. soon his ashrams will be seized & both father & son will be behind bars as there is justice left & judiciary still has power in india. I also saw some more cases listed on anti Asaram bapu site which asaram paid team tried to ban it number of times.

Yoga guru Ramdev’s stance on zero corruption is a farce, as he chooses to keep mum on alleged con man in his employ, say complainants

On March 31, 2009, iconic yoga guru Baba Ramdev slammed the government for being soft on netas, who hoarded money in Swiss bank accounts.

In fact, Ramdev has always projected himself and his organisation to be squeaky clean and free from any charges of corruption.

It is therefore ironical, that among Ramdev’s employees is  a man who has allegedly swindled a Trust he used to work with earlier, of Rs 6 lakh.

And more irony the man, Rajiv Dixhit, says he works for Ramdev’s anti-corruption organisation, the Bharat Swabhiman Trust in Haridwar.

Flashback

In December 2004, five donors from Dubai and Oman, handed Dixhit, who worked for a social upliftment organisation called Bharat Peetham, cheques totalling Rs 6 lakh for the purchase of charkhas for villagers in Varud village of Wardha.

MiD DAY has copies of the receipts given by the trust to the donors. Incidentally, Mahatma Gandhi had set up an ashram in Wardha in 1934, which still exists.

However, trustees of Bharat Peetham said that though they had received the donation of Rs 6 lakh, the money had never been spent on charkhas.

They  alleged that Dixhit had misappropriated the funds. Said Sanjeev Jha, senior committee member of Bharat Peetham, “Charkhas donated by another organisation were distributed in the village.

But Dixhit in his letter to Ajay Jain (one of the Dubai-based donors) said those charkhas had been funded by the Dubai donors, which is a lie.”

The matter came to light when Jain, called Bharat Peetham in June 2005 and asked whether the charkhas had been bought.

“Dixhit said he had bought the charkhas, but later changed his stance saying the money had been used for the tsunami victims and then for construction of buildings,” said Jain.

“We are extremely upset that the funds meant for the poor were misappropriated. I have also lost face with the other donors, as they contributed at my behest,” he added.

Over the next three years, says Jain, Dixhit fobbed off enquiries on the donations and in 2008, Jain and Dixhit met up in India. The latter  admitted he had lied and had never delivered the charkhas.

Joins Ramdev

The same year, Dixhit joined Ramdev’s Bharat Swabhiman Trust. Consequently, both the trustees and the donors shot of three complaint letters to Ramdev, asking him to address the issue.

Copies of the letters are available with this paper.

Said Jain, “Baba Ramdev is aware about the matter as a meeting had been called at his ashram on March 11, 2009.

Ramdev was present with the trustees, but nothing came of the meeting. I was also invited for the meeting, but could not make it.”

Added Abhimanyu Giri, another donor from Dubai, “Many letters have been sent to Ramdev on the issue, but he hasn’t dealt with Dixhit.”

Rs 1.47 cr
Cost of the Scottish isle Baba Ramdev bought to set up a wellness retreat

The Other Side

Dixhit, who is in Haridwar at Ramdev’s Ashram, maintained that all the allegations levied against him are baseless.

“I used the funds for constructing the Bharat Peetham building in Wardha with the prior information of all the donors, except Abhimanyu Giri.

He did not want the funds to be used for the building. All the charkhas were purchased from the funds and distributed to the villagers.

I am the secretary of the Bharat Swabhiman Trust and a reply was given to the donors by Baba Ramdev in the meeting at the Haridwar ashram six months ago.”

Tejarwala, a spokesperson of Baba Ramdev, said, “Yes, Dixhit is certainly part of our organisation, but he is not a secretary. He is a karyakarta, like the thousand others who work for Baba Ramdev.”

Baba in the News

July 2009: Yoga guru Baba Ramdev has approached the Supreme Court challenging the Delhi High Court judgment legalising gay sex among the consenting adults.

August 2007: Subodh Gupta, a corporate yoga trainer based in London, challenged Baba Ramdev for giving misleading statement or remaining silent on misleading news regarding weight loss achieved through his yoga.

Ramdev claimed that one can lose weight with yoga at a yoga camp in US.

January 2006: CPI (M) leader  Brinda Karat had alleged that human bone powder and animal parts were used in Ayurvedic medicines manufactured by Ramdev’s pharmacy.

Who is Baba Ramdev?

Baba Ramdev is known for his efforts in popularising yoga. He is also the founder of Patanjali Yogpeeth at Haridwar, said to be the biggest yoga centre in the world.

The Bharat Swabhiman Andolan, the umbrella organisation for the Trust was set up to eradicate corruption in India and restore prosperity.

A 14-page complaint of fraud has been filled at the Babupurwa Police Station in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur District against Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh, his wife Pankaja Kumari Singh and cine icon Amitabh Bachchan.

Shiv Kant Tiwari, the person who filed the complaint, claimed that all three had been involved in a financial fraud amounting to about Rs 500 crore. They have been charged with amalgamating companies for converting black money into white between 2003 and 2008, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Brij Lal and DIG (Kanpur) Neera Rawat said.

The companies named in the FIR included Energy Development Company Limited, EDCL Power Limited, Pankaja Art and Credit Limited, Sarvottam Cap Limited, EDCL Infrastructure Limited and Eastern India Company, all owned or run by the Singh couple.

Lal claimed that 25 companies have been amalgamated into Sarvottam Cap Limited.

“The FIR has been lodged under various sections of IPC, Prevention of Corruption Act and Prevention of Laundering Act,” he said.

Candidates organise sexual favours for political workers during campaign trail

As much as the voter, every candidate standing for any election knows, his fate can be decided by the political worker.

A neta can have anywhere between 20 and 500 chamchas working for him and it’s their involvement during the campaign trail that decides the leader’s success.

 For a month now, these political workers have been swamped by sexual favours.

Sources say, during every election, and this one is no different, political workers are given incentives to keep them happy by servicing them with prostitutes.

These political workers hold the key to a candidate’s success during the campaign trail, which begins approximately a month before poll day.

 

Said Tejaswi Sevekari, who runs Saheli HIV AIDS Karyakarta Sangha, an NGO for sex workers, “A month before the elections, the demand for sex workers is huge.

A representative of the political workers scouts the red light areas and books women at least a month before the polls.”

Rendezvous fixed

Sources added that the rendezvous is generally fixed at resorts, bungalows and farmhouses in the outskirts of Pune and that Mumbai is generally not part of the scheme of things.

The women normally spend two days with the client and they normally attend in groups of at least six, if not more.

In Pune, most of the sex workers are sourced from the Budhwar Peth area, which has at least 5,000 sex workers.

“Around 1,000 sex workers have been booked by political parties,” said a source.

Sevekari added that the sex workers are also paid huge tips. “Only after they return, are we told that they were servicing political parties.

All their expenses travel to the resort, and all incidentals are taken care of,” added Sevekari.

More Money

Mary D’Souza, president of the same NGO, said, “Most  girls are Nepalis or Bengalis. The girls are also expected to dance.
 
A sex worker who earns between Rs 600 and Rs 2,000 per night at other times, earns more than Rs 4,000 at such parties.” When the candidate wins, the parties are organised once more.

Hotbed

Sangli has the highest number of AIDS cases after Mumbai in the state and is also a hotbed for prostitution.
 
“Most of the deals are now done on the phone. Local political workers source sex workers from here, but the rendezvous is at a far away place.

The demand is as much as festival time,” said Kamalbai Pane, from the NGO, VAMP, which works for sex workers in Sangli. 

Added Shashikant Mane, from the NGO, “There may be a local demand for sex workers, but they do not travel for parties.”

In New Delhi, Raman Verma from DelhiEscorts, said, “After the announcement of the Haryana elections, once the names of the candidates were finalised, the demand for call girls increased.

As Haryana politicians have a good network in Delhi, most of their demands are placed in the capital.

No less than 30 to 35 call girls were sent to different parts of Haryana every day. Otherwise just 10 girls are sent.”
“As the date of the poll drew close, the demand fell.

Initially, I could not relate to this sudden change, but later, we realised most of the clients were associated with some political parties and the demand upped because of the elections,” said Anshuman from Escorts4You, another agency.

Why are Political workers Important?

Political workers are particularly important to politicians as they canvass for them, do the ground work (from door-to-door campaigns, distributing pamphlets, handing over voter slips to citizens, taking part in road shows, getting numbers to attend rallies) making it impossible to participate in an election without their help.

Most workers remain nameless, but the power they wield is considerable. In fact, they also coax the voter to go to the booth.

The Other Side

It’s very irresponsible and derogatory to make such statements. And even if the workers indulge after campaigning, why are parties held responsible. It’s an insult to say political parties indulge in such things.
Madhav Bhandari, BJP spokesperson

I am not aware about such parties, neither do I nor the MNS ever attend such parties.
Nitin Sardesai, MNS spokesperson
 
This is unheard of and I cannot imagine any political party doing this in Maharashtra. No political party would indulge in this and the Shiv Sena will never do it.
Neelam Gorhe, Shiv Sena spokesperson
 
In my 25-year-old political career I have never heard about this. This is totally false and nothing of this sort happens in Maharashtra. 
Dinkar Tawde, NCP spokesperson.

Only a dalal can think of resorting to such measures to win the confidence of workers. This has nothing to do with politics and politicians.

Nizammudin Ryeen, MRCC spokesperson

Election Rates

Pune
> Rs 600 to Rs 2,000 per night
> Between Rs 3 000 and  Rs 4,000 for attending two-day parties

Sangli
Rs 1,000 per night at lodges

Roshan Lal is a Station House Officer (SHO) of Kalyanpuri Police Station. His monthly salary: Rs 40,000. The alleged worth of the assets he amassed in his career spanning over 30 years: Rs 20 crore.

The facts sound disproportionate?

Well, Lal, allegedly, also owns three hotels in Paharganj in Central Delhi, besides a cinema hall in Farukkabad, Uttar Pradesh, and a number of other properties in Delhi and NCR.

These facts came to light after the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) raided his office on Tuesday. The ACB registered a case of amassing assets disproportionate to his income, misconduct, conspiracy and cheating against Lal.

The ACB officials conducted simultaneous searches at his Karol Bagh residence, his office in Kalyanpuri Police Station, the three hotels and the cinema hall in Farukkabad. The team has also seized a bank account.

According to ACB officials Lal allegedly owns three hotels — India International, Silver Shine and Carlo Castle — in the Paharganj area. They added that Lal allegedly registered all these properties in the names of his father, Rajender Lal, and his brother.

“One hotel was registered under the name of his father while the other two were registered under his brother’s name,” said an ACB official on the condition of anonymity, as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Allegedly, Lal also owns the cinema hall, Laxmi Talkies, in Farukkabad and that he has assets worth around Rs 20 crore, the official said.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police (ACB) of the Delhi Government I.D. Shukla confirmed that charges related to cheating, conspiracy and amassing disproportionate assets had been framed. Shukla declined to divulge any other information, saying the matter was under investigation.

Roshan Lal, meanwhile, said, “I have nothing to do with these properties. These properties are owned by my father and brother.”

When contacted, a top Delhi Police officer on the condition of anonymity, said action would be taken against the officer after the ACB report arrives. The ACB officials who failed to trace Lal in person were unable to question him.

While there are still Indian swamis and religious spiritual preachers and teachers who are not accused or convicted of crimes, those who have been caught out in nefarious activities are many. As soon as followings grow large, they attract people who are looking for advantages – both supposedly spiritual ones, but also not least financial and social gains. Organization becomes a necessity and, led by a charismatic figurehead whose word is taken as unquestionable divine truth, those who become part of their fiefdoms willingly carry out his (or her) orders, for which they are rewarded. This scenario is one chief way in which a guru cult begins. This is by no means only an Indian phenomenon, of course, as there are also some very well-known major cults in U.S.A., Italy. South Korea… and, of course, many sexually abusing priests in Christian churches and sects, and there have been many revelations concerning the Catholic Church in many countries, which has had to face vast sums in payouts following lawsuits.

Religious gurus are among the big money-earners in India, so it is hardly surprising that these cults are able to buy police and yet higher protection. Despite this, in an increasing number of instances, so-called “spiritual” gurus have been successfully prosecuted by Indian authorities for crimes ranging from sexual abuse to cynical murder. India, being such a religious cauldron seems to have the lions’ share. Indian gurus either convicted or widely accused of crimes, including major fraud, include:-

 

1) Sathya Sai Baba is most likely the most influential guru in India and abroad – self-proclaimed God Incarnate, Deity of Deities, the Vishnu Avatar of the Age etc. – who has obtained protection from attempts to convict him for murder complicity (http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/8/MurderReview.htm) and serial sex abuse (http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/6/saisex1.htm) by his devotees among Indian Prime Ministers, Presidents and Supreme or High Court judges. This is itself an indictment of the Indian State’s ongoing corruption – a kind of protection that typifies a de facto despotism (though possible only while in office) rather than the exercise of democratic and legal principles. Of course, his fraudulent ‘materializations’ and many false statements and predictions are also very documented or reported by disaffected followers.

2) The well-known ‘all singing all dancing’ Indian-based Hare Krishna sect (ISKCON) has had many and major convictions against them in the USA. See here, here

3) Indicted for many felonies, but not convicted, was Rajneesh-Osho (who fled the USA with over 100 indictments against him).

 

4) Swami Premananda – convicted for murder and multiple rape – double life sentence for murder and multiple rapes. The case went right to the Soupremem Court of India, which confirmed the conviction. See also Deccan Herald April 5 and April 6, 2005. Premananda’s alleged vibuthi materializations were investigated for fraud by Erlendur Haraldasson and Richard Wiseman See larger photo no. (No. 42) here- and read their most critical report (1995) Investigating Macro-PK in India: Swami Premananda. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 60(839) 193-202t

5) Swami Rama (Author of ‘Living Among the Himalayan Masters’) who escaped likely conviction for sexual abuses by dying before the case could be concluded.

6) Swami Rameshwaranand Giriji Maharaj – who has a large following in India and abroad – was arrested in September ‘95 as a party to the murder of his lover’s husband. The 26-year old Manoj Girothra, husband of Savita, who was having an affair with the ‘godman’, was murdered on December 3rd, 1994, some two months after his marriage. Two professional hitmen had been hired by the ‘godman’.

7) Gayatri Swami, whose influence in South India was very considerable was thoroughly exposed by Professor Erlendur Haraldsson and Richard Wiseman. He was found to be pretending to materialize objects within fruits, but had a silk thread attached to them! Likewise, his ‘materialization’ inside fruits of right-handed conches (extremely rare in India as ‘Sri Lakshmi conches’) the ‘left-handed type’ are the only indiginous sort), Haraldsson traced his imports of them from California, where they are indigenous!
source: Erlendur Haraldsson & Joop M. Houtkooper (1994). Report of an Indian swami claiming to materialize objects: The value and limitations of field observations. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 8(3), 381-397. (Full text).

8 ) Swami Balyogi Premvarni. (‘Yogant Foundation’) of Rishikesk, where he has an ashram. He also has various branches abroad. He has been exposed as a serial womaniser, especially convincingly in Mary Garden’s book ‘The Serpent Rising’ which she bases on her experiences in India in the 1970s.

9) Gowrishankara Swami; ‘Hindu monk gets 10 years RI for sodomy.’‘The Hindu’ Bangalore, Feb. 3 2004 (PTI): “The Karnataka High Court today sentenced a Hindu monk to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment and awarded a fine of Rs 25 lakhs after holding him guilty of sodomy. In default of payment of fine, the court sentenced the Gowrishankara Swami, the previous junior pontiff of Sri Siddaganga Mutt at Kyatasandra in Tumkur District, to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a further period of one year.”

10) Swami Shyam , a current ‘advaita’ guru, popular with Westerners (particulalry Canadians and Northern Europeans), many of whom have bought expensive residences at Kullu in the Himalayas, where he has his ashram. He is under attack for seducing the wives of his followers.

11) The Palghat (of Kerala) born Bala Sai Baba (the child Sai Baba), who at 35 years of age is a bit overgrown for his name. He claims to be the real Sai avatar, set up an ashram in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh and purposely copies Satya Sai Baba trait for trait in amazing detail. A clearly fraudulent attempt to hi-jack the Sathya Sai Baba ‘phenomenon’. He is the most ‘lookalike’ of a series of imitators of Sathya Sai Baba, a few of whom can be seen here.

12) A further short list of some gurus East and West, including facts about some of the criminals among them is seen here (http://www.kheper.net/topics/gurus/listing.html).

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Please go to the Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization