On 26 April, the court had pronounced 40-year-old Sai guilty of rape of a girl in 2013.
File photo of Narayan Sai. (Photo: B L Soni/IANS)
Narayan Sai, the son of self-styled godman Asaram, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Surat Sessions Court on Tuesday in a rape case.
On 26 April, the court had pronounced 40-year-old Sai guilty of rape of a girl in 2013.
He was arrested from Pipli near Haryana’s Kurukshetra in December 2013. His father too is an accused in the case that was registered in October 2013.
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Two sisters had filed separate cases against Sai and Asaram.
Sai was accused by one of the sisters of repeated sexual assaults during their stay at Asaram’s ashram between 2002 and 2005 in Surat.
The victim’s elder sister had also made a similar allegation against Asaram while she was living at an Ahmedabad ashram between 1997 and 2006.
Police had booked Asaram and his son Narayan Sai on charges of rape, sexual assault, illegal confinement and other offences.
Asaram, whose real name is Ashumal Harpalani, was convicted for life for raping a minor girl in Rajasthan last year.
Four of Sai’s aides were also arrested in the case. Two chargesheets were filed against 35 persons, while the prosecution had produced 53 witnesses and defence had 14 witnesses.
The arrests of Asaram and son had sparked a series of attacks on key witnesses.
Three witnesses, closely associated with them, were killed, including a Rajkot-based Ayurveda doctor Amrut Prajapati, who was shot dead outside his clinic.
A cook and an aide of Asaram named Akhil Gupta was shot dead in his home town Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh and Kripal Singh, a witness in the Jodhpur rape case, died a day after he was shot at in Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
Meanwhile, Narayan Sai is also facing charges of attempting to bribe policemen of Rs 8 crore for helping him in getting bail and acquittal.
(With IANS inputs.)
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