KAUSHIK POPATLAL VANI.

▮ Identity sealed · POCSO §23

Aide, Sant Shri Asaramji Bapu Ashram Trust; chief financial operative

Ahmedabad, Gujarat

“Kaushik Popatlal Vani was the chief financial manager of Asaram Bapu's estimated ₹10,000 crore empire, managing key business operations and benami holdings. Vani held supreme financial authority at the Motera ashram and disappeared from public view after Surat police seized critical financial ledgers.”

Kaushik Popatlal Vani, a Nagpur-born former mechanical engineer, joined Asaram Bapu's ashram in the early 1990s and quickly rose through the ranks to become the chief financial operative of the entire organization. Operating from the headquarters of the Sant Shri Asaramji Bapu Trust in Motera, Ahmedabad, Vani was responsible for managing the cult's extensive financial holdings, real estate acquisitions, and commercial ventures. Investigators identified him as the primary architect of the ashram's financial expansion.

According to police and income tax reports, Vani wielded supreme financial authority within the ashram, to the extent that even Asaram's son, Narayan Sai, required his approval for major financial disbursements. Vani managed a clandestine lending network worth over Rs 3,000 crore, where cash donations collected from devotees were lent out to builders and businessmen at high interest rates, with the interest collected in cash to evade taxes. He was also responsible for managing dozens of benami (proxy) properties and investments held on behalf of the trust.

In late 2013, following the rape complaints, the Surat Police raided the ashram's offices and seized 42 gunny bags containing roughly 58,000 financial documents and ledgers. Vani was questioned by the Special Investigation Team regarding the ownership of these assets and the source of the funds. While he was not immediately detained, he managed to secure anticipatory bail and subsequently went into hiding, disappearing from public view as the financial investigations intensified.

His current whereabouts remain unknown, and his disappearance has hindered efforts by the Income Tax Department and the Enforcement Directorate to fully recover unpaid taxes and seize the cult's illegal properties. Vani's role in the organization, detailed in Ushinor Majumdar's book 'God of Sin', illustrates the highly structured, corporate-style financial management that sustained Asaram Bapu's spiritual empire for decades.