Senior Mahant From Organisation Which Put Out 'Fake Babas' List Goes Missing

Mahant Mohan Das, a senior member of the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, which had put out a list of ‘fake babas’, has gone missing, according to the railway police.

IANS reports that Das was travelling from Haridwar to Kalyan in Mumbai via train. The last trace of his mobile phone was from Meerut on Sunday, the police told the news agency. Das is the spokesperson for the body of the Hindu sadhus and heads the Udasi Akhada.

Earlier this month, Das' organisation had released a listed 14 ‘fake babas’ after the Punjab and Haryana High Court handed a 20 year rape sentence to Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.

Anita Malviya, SP of Bhopal with the government railway police told the agency that Das was on the Haridwar Lokmanya Tilak Express and that he got off at Nizamuddin Railway station. No one reportedly saw him after that.

The train was reportedly nine hours behind schedule and reached the station at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday evening where Das’ associate was waiting with food. When he did not spot him, he reportedly raised an alarm. The mahant’s luggage was reportedly found by the police but the search for him is still on.

On September 10, the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, the apex body of Hindu sadhus, released a list of 14 "fake babas" and demanded a crackdown on "rootless cult leaders" by bringing in a legislation.

Giving out the list, which includes names like Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, Rampal, Asaram and his son Narayan Sai, the parishad's president Swami Narendra Giri had said, "We appeal to even the common people to beware of such charlatans who belong to no tradition and by their questionable acts, bring disrepute to sadhus and sanyasis."

The parishad is a council of akharas, which are monastic orders drawing their spiritual lineage from 8th-century seer Adi Shankara, who is said to have established orders of martial monks with the aim of defending the Hindu Dharma.

Large-scale violence took place in various parts of Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan following Ram Rahim’s conviction by the court in the two cases.

Forty-one people were killed in Haryana in the clashes. However, no death was reported from Punjab and Rajasthan.

While Asaram is in jail in connection with a sexual assault case, his son Narayan Sai, also booked in a similar case, is out on bail.

Rampal is behind bars, facing trial in a number of cases relating to violence.

"We are going to send copies of this list to the Centre, the state governments as well as all the opposition parties with the demand that a strong legislation be brought to check the activities of these self-styled cult leaders," Giri had told reporters.

Giri had then claimed that he had received a phone call the previous day from a person claiming to be a devotee of Asaram, who "threatened to kill me if a mention was made of his guru in the list of fake babas we planned to bring out today".

With Agency Inputs