The CBI has registered three cases in connection with the alleged illegal confinement of girls and women, and rape at an ashram run by self-styled godman Virendra Dev Dixit in Rohini in the national Capital.
The agency has taken over these cases from Rohini police, which cracked down on the self-style godman last month, rescued dozens of captive girls, and filed two FIRs against him and one against an unknown person. The charges against the Godman include rape and criminal intimidation of two women and their wrongful confinement.
The unknown persons have been charged with assault, wrongful confinement, causing hurt to members of a High Court-constituted panel who visited the ashram. Acting on the orders of the Delhi High Court, the agency has also formed a three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by a superintendent-level officer to probe these matters.
A DCW team, including its chief Swati Maliwal, along with Ajay Verma, advocate, appointed as amicus curiae by Delhi High Court in the matter, visited several ashrams of Dixit ashram in Delhi and interacted with the inmates.
The panel had informed the court that 100 girls and women were living in “animal-like conditions with no privacy even for bathing,” adding that inmates seemed to be under the influence of drugs.
The panel had also told the HC that there was an adjoining building where male staff was being housed and that there was a possibility that there were minor boys there and that it was probably connected to the women’s building by an underground tunnel.
Taking note of the “seriousness and the sensitivity of the matter”, a Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar had asked the CBI director to forthwith constitute a SIT which will take charge of all the records and documents pertaining to the matter. The court had asked the CBI to investigate the FIRs lodged in Delhi against the Rohini-based ashram and its founder-cum-spiritual head Dixit and the daily diary entries relating to complaints of missing girls, commission of sexual offences and even a case of suicide there.
Interestingly, just two months ago in November last year, the Delhi Police gave a clean chit to the godman on complaints of sexual assaults and confinement of minors inside his ashram.