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CBI books 'godman' for rapes

Raids are being conducted at other centres of his Adhytamik Vidyalaya Ashram across the country. Illegal activities had been going on at many of these centres for several years.

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Virendra Dev Dixit
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The CBI has registered two cases against self-proclaimed godman Virendra Dev Dixit for sexual assault, criminal intimidation and illegal confinement of minor girls at his ashram in Delhi's Rohini. The agency has lodged one more case for assault and wrongful confinement of a High Court-appointed panel that had gone to inspect the ashram.

The Delhi police had earlier given a clean chit to complaints of sexual assault and confinement of minors inside the ashram. Deputy Commissioner of Police Rishi Pal, who had cleared the ashram, was later transferred.

The CBI has now constituted a special team headed by a Superintendent of Police-level officer for investigation.

Dixit, on the run after 48 minors were rescued from 5 of his 8 Delhi ashrams alone during December-end, ran a sex racket in the name of imparting spiritual knowledge, investigations have revealed.

Raids are being conducted at other centres of his Adhytamik Vidyalaya Ashram across the country. Illegal activities had been going on at many of these centres for several years.

In December, an NGO, Foundation for Social Empowerment, moved the Delhi High Court and alleged, on behalf of several parents, that girls are illegally kept inside an ashram in Rohini.

A committee comprising Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chief Swati Maliwal, advocates Nandita Rao, Ajay Verma and Shalab Gupta, besides petitioner Seema Sharma of the NGO, went inside the ashram.

An inspection report was brought to the notice to the Acting Chief Justice of the High Court, Gita Mittal. It said that over 100 girls and women are being kept like animals in a fortress secured with metal doors and barbed wires. The report, submitted to the court in a sealed cover, said inmates had no privacy, even when they bathed, and they seemed drugged.

The team also seized a box of DVDs, syringes, medicines and several letters written to Dixit, accusing him of assaulting inmates. The High Court expressed shock and equated, without direct reference, the ashram to Baba Ram Rahim's Dera Sacha Sauda in Haryana's Sirsa. India's premier investigation agency, the CBI, is handling the case on the court's order.

The ashram in Rohini allegedly brainwashed followers into allowing their daughters to be "taught spirituality."

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