The Gujarat authorities will transfer the excessive court docket to problem the acquittal of self-styled godman Asaram’s spouse, their daughter and his 4 disciples in a 2013 rape case through which he was sentenced to life imprisonment, an official mentioned on Thursday.
A court docket in Gandhinagar on January 31 sentenced Asaram to life imprisonment within the rape case filed by his former lady disciple in 2013. Asaram’s spouse Laxmiben, their daughter Bharati, and his 4 disciples, who had been accused by the prosecution of aiding and abetting the crime, had been acquitted by the court docket for need of proof.
“The state’s legal department passed a resolution on May 6 and directed the prosecution to file an appeal against the acquittal of six accused by a Gandhingar court in the 2013 rape case against self-styled godman Asaram,” particular public prosecutor within the case, R C Kodekar, instructed PTI.
The prosecution has additionally sought the federal government’s consent to problem the Gandhinagar court docket’s January 31 order, through which it instructed that life sentences for Asaram in Jodhpur and Ahmedabad instances ought to run concurrently.
The authorities’s consent for a similar is awaited, Kodekar mentioned. The octogenarian godman is at the moment serving a life time period in a Jodhpur jail in one other case of raping a minor woman at his ashram in Rajasthan in 2013.
The Gandhinagar court docket sentenced Asaram within the case for raping a girl disciple, who hailed from Surat, on a number of events from 2001 to 2007 at his ashram at Motera close to Ahmedabad earlier than her escape.
In its order, the court docket mentioned that Asaram sexually abused a sufferer of a youthful age than his daughter and dedicated a criminal offense that can not be taken evenly. It mentioned the accused dedicated “a very serious crime against the society and such a heinous crime cannot have any place of sympathy and should be punished to the fullest extent prescribed by law.”
It turns into the ethical accountability not solely of the society but in addition of the court docket to set an instance and forestall such a behaviour, the court docket mentioned, including that everybody had a “shared responsibility to ensure women’s safety”.
The court docket additionally noticed that in our society, a non secular chief is taken into account a person who instils love for the divine, leads us by means of devotion, faith and information by way of ‘satsang’ to God. It additionally mentioned that Asaram would not deserve sympathy given the character of the crime and that the defence on the bottom of his outdated age and unhealthy well being can’t be thought of legitimate.
