"He's 85, in prison for 10 years:" Gujarat High Court to hear appeal by Asaram Bapu on priority

The Gujarat High Court has decided to start hearing the appeal filed by self-styled godman Asaram Bapu against his conviction in a 2013 rape case from April 4 after noting his advanced age and the fact that he has been in prison for around a decade [Ashumal @ Asharam Thaumal Sindhi (Harpalani) vs State of Gujarat]..A division bench of Justices AS Supehia and Vimal Vyas was dealing with the godman's plea to suspend his prison sentence, when it decided to prioritise hearing his appeal against the rape conviction. "He has undergone 10 years in prison and is 85-years-old. We will hear the main appeal itself instead of his plea for suspension of sentence," Justice Supehia said..The Court added that, "Hearing of the main appeal or the plea to suspend sentence would need similar amount of time. Thus, we will hear the main appeal from April 4.".The Court also said that it would try and complete hearing the appeal, the papers of which runs into thousands of pages, before the summer break. "This is so that we can give our judgment after the vacations," the bench informed. .In January 2023, a trial court in Gujarat convicted Asaram Bapu for raping his female disciple on several occasions at his Surat ashram in 2013.Asaram was convicted for offences under Sections 376 (rape), 377 (unnatural sex), 354 (outraging modesty of a woman), 346 (wrongful confinement), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (destroying evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).As per the First Information Report (FIR) lodged at Chandkheda police station in Ahmedabad, the survivor was allegedly confined by Asaram in his ashram at the outskirts of Surat city and was raped repeatedly from 2001 to 2006.This was not the first such case in which he has been convicted. He is already serving life sentence in two separate cases involving sexual offences.He has been lodged in a jail in Jodhpur since 2018, after he was brought from Indore where he was first arrested in 2013..In a plea challenging his conviction, the godman has asserted that the entire case of the prosecution against him appears to be "fake, fabricated, concocted" and the result of an after-thought by the prosecutrix. He contended that the case is a well-planned conspiracy hatched by the prosecution witnesses, who appear to be somewhat "dissatisfied and unhappy" with the working of his ashram.He also highlighted the delayed filing of the First Information Report (FIR) (after 12 years) to assert that the prosecution witnesses hatched this conspiracy to extort monetary gains from him."The trial court has erred in appreciating the fact that various witnesses cited by the prosecution appears to be enmity witnesses i.e. the witnesses who were either removed from Ashram due to their ill-conduct or had left Ashram and wanted to extort money from the Ashram," the plea stated.Further, the plea pointed out that the investigating officer had stated that certain witnesses who testified against Asaram said that they had never seen wrong activities taking place in his ashram, but that they were ready to testify against him if he could be convicted with the help of their statements."Most witnesses were thrown out from the Ashram in the year 2004 due to his activities in contravention to the ideology of Ashram and thereafter, they have tried to defame the image of Ashram and also tried to falsely implicate the applicant in false cases," the plea stated. As far as the testimony of the victim about the alleged "forceful sexual intercourse", Asaram Bapu's plea stated that the same is "highly improbable" considering his age at the relevant time was 64 years while the victim was 21 years."Therefore, the said version seems to be highly improbable as the victim could easily overthrow the applicant and run away to save herself," the plea stated.