‘Baba’ wanted to bed 16,000 women: Survivors

AGRA: A day after 41 girls were rescued from Adhyatmik Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya in Rohini, Delhi, owned and run by Baba Virendra Dev Dixit, TOI found that the absconding 'godman' was booked in four gang-rape cases as far back as in 1998 in Farrukhabad district.Dixit was also booked for attacking policemen with the help of six of his associates when Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and local police raided his ashram to arrest him in the gang-rape cases. In the same year, the electricity department booked Dixit for power theft from cables passing close to his ashram. Later in 2011, one more FIR was filed against him in Maharajganj district for kidnapping a woman to murder her.According to a police officer, all the rape survivors were followers of Dixit and had been living in his ashram in Kampil town of Farrukhabad district. They were allegedly raped over the months of March, April and May in 1997, but filed the FIR in 1998, after they managed to contact their relatives or flee from the ashram, where they had been confined. The survivors were from Mathura, New Delhi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. In the FIR, they levelled charges against Dixit’s associate Ravinder Dass as well.Speaking to TOI over phone, inspector-general of police (IGP) of Kanpur range, Alok Singh , said, “There were seven to eight criminal cases against Dixit in Farrukhabad district which were filed in 1998. We are trying to take out and examine old records. Dixit managed to get a stay on all the cases from Allahabad high court and later went absconding.”Dixit was born in 1942 in Ahmedganj village under Kayamganj police jurisdiction in Farrukhabad district. His family later shifted to Kampil. In 1965, he became a primary school teacher in Kampil. He also taught at Kayamganj Girls’ School for two years. He then started doctoral research in Sanskrit at Gujarat University, Ahmedabad in 1969.The same year, he joined Prajapita Brahmakumari Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya at Mount Abu in Rajasthan. He is no longer associated with the school.Over the next decades, Dixit became a godman and opened at least 80 ashrams across the country, two of which are in Kampil’s Chaudharain Colony and Sikatarbagh of Farrukhabad city.Dev Singh Yadav, a septuagenarian who lives right in front of Kampil ashram, said, “Dixit’s father had thrown him out of the house for allegedly raping a girl. In 1984, after the father died, Dixit returned here from Mount Abu, demolished his family home and built an ashram.”Multiple sources confirmed that while Delhi Police was conducting raids at the Rohini ashram, a white van took away at least six girls from the Kampil ashram on Thursday evening. Sources claimed that the two ashrams in Farrukhabad district were heavily guarded day and night, and none of the women residents ever came out of it. The doors and windows of the three-storey buildings have iron grills on them.