Ashram Head Wanted To Sexually Exploit 16,000 Women, Victim Tells Police

New Delhi: One of the victims rescued by the police during raids at Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya in Rohini area of New Delhi, on Thursday, told the investigators that the ashram founder Virender Dev Dikshit wanted to sexually exploit 16,000 women.

One of the victims told the police that she was raped by the ashram founder several times. "The baba imagined himself as God’s incarnation and wanted to have 16,000 queens. He told me that I was one of his 16,000 ranis...He raped me on several occasions," she said. Meanwhile, raids were conducted by the Uttar Pradesh police on Saturday at the ashram's campus in Siktarbad and Kampil and rescued 47 women and a minor girl. Facing a stiff opposition from the inmates, the police had to enter the ashrams through the roofs of the adjoining buildings, they said. The women inmates of the ashrams demanded a search warrant for opening the gates and were also involved in a verbal spat with the police. Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Tribhuvan Singh said the minor girl, rescued from the Siktarbad ashram, would be produced before a magistrate and her statement would be recorded soon. The Delhi Commission for Women, along with the police, raided an ashram run by Dixit at Dwarka in the national capital today and rescued five girls.

This came in the wake of raids conducted at the Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya at Rohini in Delhi on Thursday, where women and girls were kept confined like "animals in a cage".