Bhole Baba whose satsang in Hathras, UP, resulted in stampede and 121 deaths must be really naive, ‘bhola’, or innocent. He need not have gone on the run and put himself through discomfort, unless he wanted media attention. With his past ‘medals’, and the experience under his belt (sexual assault charges, rape, jail time) he should have known he’d be completely safe. The downside of Godi media not reporting the truth of the fun time the Gurmeet Ram Rahims and Brij Bhushans have is that the poor Bhole Babas feel the need to go underground.
If he had consulted Brij Bhushan Singh, he would be roaming around freely.
If a prosecution was launched there would organised protests by leading lights, like the Kathua rape-murder case.
If he was accused no cases would have been seriously prosecuted, the guys accused of rape and murder of the Dalit girl in Hathras in 2020 would have advised him.
If he was indeed convicted of rape and murder, he could come out on bail every other day. Gurmeet Ram Rahim would have informed him.
If he didn’t like to come out on bail again and again he could have come out for being ‘sanskari’, ask the Bilqis Banu rapists.
If he wanted a grand welcome on coming out after 121 stampede deaths he had great prospects of being garlanded by Ministers, ask the Ramgarh (Jharkhand) mob lynching guys or even ask Jayant Sinha. Besides, not being Yeshwant Sinha’s sons any other Ministers garlanding him would not even have been dropped from election contests!
But, being on the run within the country must be considered below the dignity of some of these gurus and babas. The guy to emulate is Nithyananda Paramashivam and set up something like the micro nation of ‘Kailaasaa’.
If none of these things worked and Bhole Baba still felt insecure the powers-that-be could have done the opposite of what they did with the BK-16, they could hack the Baba’s computer and secretly install files that proclaimed his innocence.
In Nehru’s time there may only have been tax exemptions. We now live in much better times with ‘Amrit Kaal’ and ‘Achche Din’ and can avail of crime exemptions, prosecution exemptions, conviction exemptions if you’re on the ‘goli maaro saalon ko side’. Then there are the ‘perennial bail scheme’, ‘garland-the-accused scheme’, ‘overturn-conviction scheme’, ‘you-get-convicted-someone-else-serves-jail-time-scheme’, ‘join-the-ruling-party scheme’, ‘washing machine programmes etc. All in all, there’s a scheme for every class of crime! Why should liberalisation be limited only to the economic sphere? Unleashing the animal spirit in every sphere of life can result in all-round social development towards becoming Vishwagurus. And finally, of course, we have the option of rewriting history. The idea, earlier, was to rewrite past history. We can now graduate to rewriting current history.
Amen
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.