A fast-track court in Haryana’s Fatehabad sentenced 49 years old Jalebi Baba alias Amarpuri, alias Billu to 14 years’ rigorous imprisonment for rape of two women followers and a minor girl. He was a controversial, self-styled godman over past many years and was alleged involved in raping more than 100 female followers assuring to cure tham from diseases and providing them relief in his Tohana ‘Ashram’. Jalebi Baba was usually offering tea to his fremale followers mixed to a intoxicated drug and opium when they became unconscious and not only raped but their nude video was also prepared by Baba Jalebi. When large number of sex scandal cases of Jalebi Baba and complaints against him were lodged with the police which conducted raid at his ‘Ashram’ and recovered videos and footages of CCTV cameras installed in the ‘Ashram’ displaying vulgar acts by Jalebi Baba, he was arrested and large number of cases registered against him in October 2017.
Past scenario of Amarpui alias Billu originally hailing from Mansa in Punjab earlier was a petty vendor selling ‘jalebis’ and ‘chole-kulche’ on a push cart in the bylanes of Tohana, a town in Haryana’s Fatehabad district for a long time and meanwhile became a self-styled godman who assured relief to gullible women searching for solace, later constructed his own religious ‘Ashram’, sexually assaulted over a hundred women including minor before the law caught up with him. On January 10, a fast-track court in Haryana’s Fatehabad sentenced Jalebi Baba to 14 years’ rigorous imprisonment for raping two women followers and a minor girl, besides seven years imprisonment each in several other rape cases, besides 5 years imprisonment in a case registered against him under IT Act. He was sentenced for making sexually explicit videos of his victims and circulating them. “It’s a case where a minor girl has been subjected to the lust of an aged man leaving a traumatic effect on the child, her parents have a long way to go to forget the past,” wrote special judge Balwant Singh in the order.
Information reveals that on hearing the sentence, Jalebi Baba broke down in the courtroom. The crimes committed by Jalebi Baba bear a striking resemblance to the ones committed by several such self-styled godmen, who win the trust of women followers only to exploit them. Billu Ram was an ordinary man when he migrated to Tohana in Haryana two decades ago in search of a job from Madhya Pradesh but was originally a native of Mansa in Punjab. He started working as a labourer in Tohana and moved on to selling ‘jalebis’ on a ‘rehri’. In 2002, he built a temple near the old Industrial Training Institute and became its priest, disclosed a police official. He survived on offerings and donations for a long times and built a ‘Ashram’ having four rooms and gained confidence of his devotees when the abuse started and used to rape women, film the act and blackmail them by threatening to make the videos viral on social media information revealed.
According to one of the women complainants, she visited Jalebi Baba in 2011 when her nine-month-old daughter diagnosed with typhoid was cured, which attracted a large number of followers. According to another complainant, she arrived at ‘Ashram’ along with her husband who left her and she was asked to wait in the basement and was offered tea when she fell unconscious after having the tea but after three hours when regained consciousness realised something was wrong with her body and told her husband and three days later they got the FIR registered when Jalebi Baba was arrested but granted bail. Past information revealed, a father of four daughters and two sons, Billu Ram lost his wife before he shifted to Tohana, where he met an occultist who introduced him to exorcism.
The public prosecutor told the court that the police came to know about Jalebi Baba’s misdeeds on July 19, 2018, when an informer showed a sexually explicit video clip on the mobile phone to inspector Pradeep Kumar, the Tohana city police station SHO. The informer shared a CD that showed more women had been sexually assaulted when a case was registered under Sections 292, 293, 294, 376, 384, 509 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67A of the IT Act against Jalebi Baba, who was sentenced 14 years imprisonment on 10th January 2023. A couple of days ago Jalebi Baba lodged in Hisar Central Jail-2 was unwell since past few days and started having severe pain in his chest during night and was rushed to the Civil Hospital Hisar, where the doctors referred him to Agroha Medical College. When his condition improved Baba was sent back to the jail, but he started having pain again late at night and was rushed to the hospital where doctors declared him brought dead. According to Azad Nagar police station a postmortem on the body was conducted by a team of doctors in the presence of a magistrate with complete videography.
