The police have arrested 425 people from the ashram but are still searching for 63-year-old Rampal, an engineer-turned-guru, who has now been charged with sedition. He is believed to be inside with around 2,000 supporters.



Haryana Chief Minister ML Khattar said this evening that the police crackdown on the ashram, spread across 12 acres in Barwala town, would continue till Rampal is arrested. Home Minister Rajnath Singh reportedly called the Chief Minister and asked him to resolve the crisis as early as possible.



The High Court has ordered Rampal's arrest by Friday after he repeatedly ignored their summons to appear for questioning in a 2006 case involving the killing of a villager by his supporters.

The self-styled Godman has been hiding in the ashram for nearly two weeks using women and children as shields. Devotees who call themselves 'Baba's Commandos' are armed with guns, acid pouches and petrol bombs, the police say.

Thousands of policemen and paramilitary personnel are positioned in a three-ring cordon around the ashram - said to be a maze of corridors and false walls - but the administration has stopped short of launching a full scale assault. Sources say a former Hisar MP is negotiating with Rampal for his surrender.

The bodies of four women were found from the ashram this morning by the police. How they died will be established by a post-mortem.

Among the dead was one-year-old Dhairya, who had congenital jaundice; he was brought from Madhya Pradesh to the ashram, where water and power supply had been cut off earlier this week and food is also running low. A fifth woman, who had run away from the ashram, died in hospital, reportedly of a heart ailment.

Over 15,000 people who had come for what they were told would be a week-long 'Satsang' or religious discourse have left the ashram since last night. Some women were seen coming out, hands in the air, as the police rounded up devotees. Many of them say they were imprisoned by the baba's followers.

The police said Rampal's close aide Purushottam Dass was arrested while he was trying to slip out of the ashram this afternoon.