A local court framed charges against self-styled godman Asaram Bapu’s son Narayan Sai and his nine accomplices in an alleged rape case filed by a city-based woman. The charges were framed by additional district sessions court judge HS Muliya. Sai has been under arrest since December 2013.
Seven persons, including Sai and his aides were charged under IPC sections for rape, unnatural sex, molestation, wrongful confinement, unlawful assembly, criminal intimidation and criminal conspiracy. Three others, also Sai’s aides, were charged under IPC Section 212 for harbouring an offender.
Sai, 43, was arrested following allegations of repeated sexual assault of the victim during her stay as an inmate at Asaram’s ashram at Surat between 2002 and 2005. He was arrested from near the Delhi-Haryana border in December 2013 after evading the law for two months, following the registration of the case.
The victim’s elder sister had also made similar allegations against Sai’s father Asaram while she was living at his ashram in outskirts of Ahmedabad between 1997 and 2006. Earlier in June, Sai and 10 others were implicated in another case of conspiracy: an attempt to bribe police and judicial officials to weaken the charges against him.
(With inputs from PTI)
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