Witnesses needn't even be attacked to be influenced, often merely the threat of it or attacks on fellow witnesses is enough.

The killing of witness Akhil Gupta, a former cook and witness in a case of rape filed against Asaram Bapu, might just end up being the most obvious of multiple attempts that seem to have been made to influence the trial against the controversial godman.

Gupta, a former cook to the godman, was walking home on Sunday when he was shot by two unidentified persons in Muzaffarnagar and succumbed to his injuries despite being rushed to nearby hospital.

However, as this report points out, Gupta had begun staying in a rented home some distance from his original residence in order to ensure his own security. And with the killing, Gupta also became the second witness after Amrut Prajapati, another former devotee of the controversial godman was killed in June 2013 in Gujarat.

In Prajapati's case, an unidentified person visited him in his clinic, shot him and escaped with an accomplice on a motorcycle. Prajapati had been a long time critic of the controversial godman and had been kicked out of an ashram for giving statements to the police against Asaram in connection with the death of two children in 2005.

While Parajapati had made wide ranging allegations against the godman and had reportedly faced multiple threats in the past, the police have failed to secure any convictions in the case so far.

Another person assisting in the case against the godman, Dinesh Waghchandani, was the victim of an acid attack in May 2014 but managed to catch his assailant. Another witness, Rakesh Patel, was stabbed and during the probe the police up arrested at least eight followers of the godman for planning attacks on other witnesses.

The police also received a scare recently when a complainant in one of the cases sought to have her statement made before a magistrate in the case withdrawn. While the complainant sought to change her statement, the magistrate refused to let her. She also went missing briefly, but luckily for the police has since resurfaced and claimed that she had gone missing purely to escape the attention that came with having security personnel protect her.

The godman and his son Narayan Sai continue to remain in jail as they have failed to get bail from the courts so far, but their large following of devotees remain and as some of the previous cases show, some of them aren't averse to resorting to extreme measures in a desperate attempt to influence the upcoming trial against the two godmen. The godman has been accused of sexual assault, mysterious deaths of disciple's children and fraud, but has managed to escape the clutches of the law until it caught up with him following the filing of cases of rape against him and his son.

Given the appalling pattern of witness intimidation and outright elimination, it's surprising that the godman's former cook, Gupta, was travelling without any security.

Indian authorities have been prodded many times to consider the creation of a witness protection programme, especially in cases such as these where the accused enjoy a wide sphere of influence, but have so far not shown any sign of implementing it. Witnesses needn't even be attacked to be influenced, often merely the threat of it or attacks on fellow witnesses is sufficient to intimidate them. If Gupta's killing is indeed found to be connected to the godman's followers, the inability to ensure his security has effectively reduced him to just another statistic due to a loophole in the justice system that needs to be plugged.

Until it is done, godmen and mafia dons alike will run amok and, more importantly, scott-free.