The Supreme Court on January 7 granted interim bail to Asaram Bapu on medical grounds till March 31 in the 2013 rape case. It said the 86-year-old, currently lodged in a Jodhpur jail in another rape case, was suffering from various age-related health conditions besides a heart ailment.
A bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Rajesh Bindal, however, directed the self-styled godman to not meet his followers after he is released on interim bail.
A Jodhpur court had, in April 2018, awarded life sentence to Asaram after holding him guilty of raping a teenage girl in his ashram in 2013. On August 29, 2024, the Gujarat High Court rejected the godman's plea seeking the suspension and found no case to grant him the reprieve.
The chargesheet against Asaram and four other co-accused was filed by the police on November 6, 2013, under various sections of the POSCO (Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, the Juvenile Justice Act and the Indian Penal Code.
The teenager had said in her complaint that Asaram had called her to his ashram in Manai area near Jodhpur and raped her on the night of August 15, 2013. The young girl from Shahajanpur in Uttar Pradesh was studying at Asaram's ashram in Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh.
Asumal Sirumalani, known as Asaram Bapu by his followers, was a religious leader in India. After starting to preach in the early 1970s, he went on to establish over 400 ashrams in India and abroad and has numerous followers.
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