AMRUT PRAJAPATI.

▮ Identity sealed · POCSO §23

Prosecution witness, Surat rape case

Rajkot, Gujarat

“Dr. Amrut Prajapati was a former personal physician to Asaram Bapu and a key prosecution witness who was shot dead in Rajkot in May 2014. Prajapati turned against Asaram following the suspicious deaths of two gurukul children in 2008 and became the first victim of the cult's witness assassination campaign.”

Dr. Amrut Prajapati was a qualified Ayurvedic physician who served as the personal doctor and medical advisor to Asaram Bapu for more than 12 years. Operating within the inner circle of the Motera ashram, Prajapati possessed intimate knowledge of Asaram's lifestyle, personal habits, and administrative decisions. However, his relationship with the godman fractured in 2008 following the suspicious deaths of two young cousins at the Motera gurukul. Prajapati publicly criticized the ashram's handling of the tragedy and subsequently severed all ties with the organization.

When the sexual assault complaints were filed in 2013, Prajapati cooperated with the police, recording a detailed statement before a magistrate under Section 164 of the CrPC. In his testimony, he detailed Asaram's sexual exploitation of female disciples and alleged that the ashram used video recordings to blackmail victims into silence. Following his deposition, Prajapati became a primary target for the cult's radical followers, surviving three physical assaults and receiving constant threats, which led him to request police protection.

On May 23, 2014, while Prajapati was attending to patients at his private clinic in Rajkot, Gujarat, two unidentified men posing as patients entered the clinic and shot him in the neck at close range. Prajapati was rushed to a local hospital in critical condition, where he fought for his life for over two weeks before succumbing to his injuries on June 10, 2014. His death sent shockwaves through the legal system, marking the first murder in a systematic campaign to eliminate prosecution witnesses.

The investigation into his murder languished for years until the arrest of Kartik Haldar in 2016, who confessed to executing the shooting on instructions from ashram coordinators. In a significant development, in December 2024, the Gujarat Police arrested co-conspirator Kishor Balkrishna Bodke, who had compiled the target lists and had been harbored at an Asaram ashram in Karnataka for ten years. Prajapati's murder is remembered as a tragic illustration of the extreme dangers faced by whistleblowers confronting powerful religious figures.