Lawyer held for helping Narayan Sai while on the run

SURAT: A lawyer from Panipat in Haryana was arrested for allegedly providing logistics to godman Asaram's son Narayan Sai when he was on the run in connection with a rape case before his arrest earlier this month.

Nishant Raj (28) was apprehended yesterday after he was summoned by local police for questioning.

"He reached Surat yesterday and was arrested by police in the evening," DCP (Crime) Shobha Bhutada said today.

According to police, Raj had assisted Sai "materially and logistically" and also provided the latter with a car.

Sai was arrested on December 4 from Delhi-Haryana border after police chased his car, after evading the law for nearly two months in connection with the rape case.

Raj was today produced in the court of a Chief Judicial Magistrate who remanded him in judicial custody.

Sai, who is accused of repeatedly raping a young woman inmate of Surat ashram between 2002 and 2005, is in police remand till January 1 for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to offer bribe to policemen and even judicial officers to weaken the rape case.

Two sisters from Surat had lodged separate complaints against Sai and Asaram, accusing them of rape and illegal confinement, among other charges.

Sai was booked under various IPC sections of rape, unnatural sex, molestation, wrongful confinement, unlawful assembly, rioting and criminal intimidation on the complaint of the younger sister.

The elder sister, in her complaint against Asaram, had accused him of repeated sexual assaults between 1997 and 2006 when she was residing at his ashram near Ahmedabad.

Asaram (72) is currently lodged in a Rajasthan jail in connection with alleged sexual assault of a minor girl at his ashram in Jodhpur.