Jodhpur: The Rajasthan High Court on Tuesday allowed self-styled godman Asaram Bapu, who is serving a life sentence for raping a minor, to undergo treatment for seven days at an Ayurvedic hospital in Maharashtra under police custody. Asaram, 83, who was arrested in September 2013, was admitted at AIIMS Jodhpur for two days after he developed some heart-related ailment and has been undergoing treatment there.
Justices PS Bhati and Munnuri Laxman of the high court's Jodhpur bench directed that Asaram would stay for treatment at the hospital under police custody for seven days. An ailing Asaram had insisted on Ayurvedic treatment and pleaded to the court to grant him permission for treatment specifically at Madhavbaug Multidisciplinary Cardiac Care Clinic and Hospital in Pune.
Earlier in March this year also, he had moved the high court with the same prayer seeking parole for 14 days. But the court had rejected the plea following a report from Pune police expressing apprehensions about a possible threat to law and order during his stay at the hospital here. He was then allowed to have Ayurvedic treatment at a private hospital in Jodhpur for about a fortnight.
Asaram's pleas for suspension of sentence on health grounds were earlier rejected by the high court and the Supreme Court. He was arrested in Indore for allegedly raping a teenage girl in his ashram here in 2013 and was convicted by a special POCSO court in 2018.
A Gujarat court had, in January 2023, convicted him in a decade-old sexual assault case involving a woman disciple and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The victim, a Surat-based woman, had accused him of repeatedly raping her at his ashram in 2013.
