Alexandra Stein, Bargaav Parikh, Chanchal Mishra, Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu, Discovery Plus, documentaries, Gop Maniar, India, Mahender Chawla, Mara Einstein, Max, Naman Govil, Neelam Dubey, Praful J. Veghela, reviews, true crime, TV, Ushinor Majumdar
May 3, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Naman Govil
Some language in Hindi with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the three-episode documentary series “Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu” features a predominantly Indian group of people (with a few white people) discussing the scandals of the cult led by Asaram Bapu, who was convicted of rape in 2018 and in 2023, and sentenced to life in prison.
Culture Clash: Several people in the documentary say that Bapu and other people in the cult have committed several violent crimes, including murder, attempted murder and sexual assaults.
Culture Audience: “Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about scandalous cults.
“Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu” tells a familiar story about a cult led by someone who is disgraced and eventually convicted of serious crimes. This three-episode docuseries gives a competent and well-rounded overview of the Asaram Bapu cult scandals. There’s nothing new that’s reported, and the pacing is occasionally dull. However, the documentary has interviews with a good variety of people.
Directed by Naman Govil, “Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu” repeats a lot well-documented information that was already reported and stops short of doing its own investigation into ongoing or unresolved crime accusations. Instead, the documentary series just focuses on the most high-profile accusations against the cult: The 2008 deaths of cousins Dipesh Vaghela (10 years old) and Abhishek Vaghela (11 years) and the rapes of three females who were underage at the time and whose names are not revealed in the documentary to protect their privacy.
Episode 1, titled “The Business of Enlightenment,” chronicles how Asaram Bapu came to power through his cult, which was rocked by the cult’s first major scandal in 2008, when two boys who attended a cult boarding school went missing from the school and were later found dead and mutilated. Episode 2, titled “Skeletons in the Closet,” details the investigation results for these two deaths and has stories about cult members getting involved in occult activities. Episode 3, titled “People vs. Asaram,” has information on the court cases where the cult founder and his son were convicted of raping girls.
Asaram Bapu (known more commonly by the one-word name Asaram) was born in the village of Bernai, India, on April 17, 1941. His birth name was Asumal Thaumal Harpalani or Asumal Sirumalani. Asaram preached conservative philosophies and rules for sexual activities and gender roles. He used the Hindu religion to appoint himself as a “spiritual leader” and launched a small group of followers in the early 1970s. Gopi Maniar, an independent journalist, says that in these early years, Asaram funded the cult by bootlegging.
By the 1980s, Asaram began calling himself a messiah, and the cult had expanded to having several ashrams (places of worship) across India. The 1990s was a peak growth decade for the cult, which used cable TV to increase the cult’s visibility and popularity. Asaram also had an image of respectability and power because he was close to prominent politicians, some of whom said he was their spiritual adviser. A documentary epilogue mentions the cult has an estimated 40 million followers worldwide, with most of the followers in South Asia.
The documentary doesn’t delve too much into Asaram’s personal background before he became a cult leader. And there is no mention of his wife Laxmi Dev and their daughter Bhartishree or Bharti Devi. His son Narayan Sai is mentioned as the “second in command” heir to the cult, whose followers were taught that Sai should be worshipped too.
Mahender Chawla, a former member of the cult, is interviewed and gives the most disturbing details about what he says the cult was like for him behind the scenes. Chawla says he came from a middle-class family and had a very religious mother. When he was a medical science student, he joined the cult. “I used to believe Asaram was God.”
Chawla says gave up his regular life and cut ties with his family and friends to join the cult. He went from being a devoted follower to a disillusioned follower in 2004, when he says he saw Asaram “in a compromising position with a woman.” Based on Chawla’s tone of voice and how emotional Chawla gets when he remembers this incident, this “compromising position” might not have been consensual.
“I could not believe my eyes,” Chawla says when remembering how he felt when witnessing this sexual misconduct. “I could’ve never imagined that something this disgusting could happen. That’s when I realized that this man is no god or saint. This man is the devil.”
Still, it took a while (about a year later) for Chawla to officially leave the cult. He says he quit the cult in August 2005. He says after he left the cult, members who stayed (people whom he considered his “extended family”) shamed him and harassed him.
Chawla goes into more detail about other things he experienced in the cult. He describes cult members being taught that women couldn’t be fully trusted because women were inherently more evil than men. Women were so distrusted that cult members couldn’t eat food that was looked at by women.
According to Chawla, cult leaders also told him that people’s minds could be controlled through chanting. He says that cult leaders encouraged him to explore black magic and the occult, which was a contradiction of the cult’s image of being advocates of Hinduism. Chawla also comments that the cult also had bizarre chanting rituals that followers were told could cure diseases.
A turning point for the cult’s reputation began in July 2008. Dipesh Vaghela and Abhishek Vaghela (whose fathers are brothers) were both enrolled in a cult boarding school in Gujarat because their parents believed that this school would bring the kids closer to God. On July 3, 2008, Dipesh asked his father Praful J. Veghela to come to the school as quickly as possible, but Dipesh wouldn’t say way. Earlier, Dipesh had requested batteries for his keyboard and roller skates.
Praful and his brother Shantilal J. Vaghela (who is Abhishek’s father) went to the school and found out that Dipesh and Abishek were both missing. At first, school official that the boys were on a field trip and had not returned yet. Asharam told the fathers to do some rituals, such as pick up four stones in the road and boil some water. It’s why the parents of the boys did not file a missing persons report right away
However, by the second day that Abishek and Dipesh were missing, it was undeniable that something was very wrong, and a missing persons report was filed. On the third day that the boys were missing, their decomposed bodies were found behind Motera stadium. Their bodies had been burned and partially dismembered. (The documentary briefly shows deliberately blurred photos of the bodies, with advance warning about the graphic nature of the photos.) Shockingly, an official investigation ruled that although mutilation of the corpses was not accidental, there wasn’t enough proof for the deaths to declared as homicides.
Praful and Shantilal—who are now former members of the cult—both give heart-wrenching interviews about the ordeal they went through to get justice, which they believe was corrupted because too many people in law enforcement were intimidated by Asharam’s power. The brothers (who briefly went on a public hunger strike in 2008 to protest the faulty police investigation) also say that Asharam never offered condolences and never offered to cooperate with the police investigation. Archival footage in the documentary shows that when Asharam was confronted by the media about these two deaths, he said he couldn’t comment because he doesn’t know how the boys died.
Praful says in the beginning of the documentary that after his own son went missing and was found dead, he discovered that many other children were reported missing from the cult’s boarding schools. The documentary does not elaborate or go into more details about these other missing persons. The documentary also has no details about the boarding school officials who were on duty and responsible for the safety and well-being of Dipesh and Abishek.
Several people in the documentary say that sexual abuse was rampant in the cult, with women and girls being brainwashed into thinking that it was the highest honor to have sex with Asaram or his son. Part of the brainwashing was telling these victims that they would be closer to God if they had sex with Asaram or his son. But some of the victims fought back and filed charges for rape under India’s Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act that became law in 2012.
In 2013, Asaram was convicted of raping a 16-year-girl in Jodphur, India, and sentenced to life in prison. In separate incidents, Asaram and his son were convicted of raping two underage sisters in Surat, India: Asaram was convicted of raping the older sister and received another life-in-prison sentence in 2023, while his son was convicted of raping the younger sister and received life in prison in 2019. Needless to say, Asaram and his son are not interviewed for the documentary, but there is archival footage clips of some of their public appearances in the years before they father and son were sent to prison.
The only person defending the cult in the documentary is cult member Neelam Dubey, a spokesperson for Sant Shr Ashramji Ashram. She says the expected things about how Asaram and his son were wrongfully convicted and have done nothing wrong. Dubey says that before she became a follower of Asaram, she used to be a crime reporter who hated spiritual leaders.
Several journalists, authors and cult experts are interviewed for the documentary. The one with the most compelling comments is TV reporter Maniar, who was physically attacked by mob of cult members when she was on the scene to report a protest in the Vaghela boys’ deaths. Maniar says she was pregnant at the time of the attack, which resulted in her having to get medical treatment at a hospital. Luckily, she did not miscarry
Maniar comments on how this assault affected her: “The psychological trauma of the attack was distressing.” However, she says she overcame those feelings because she knew it was important for her not to let the attack stop her from doing her job. “I was determined that we had to do something and expose the truth to everyone.
Also interviewed in the documentary is Chanchal Mishra, is one of the most important people in law enforcement who was responsible for bringing Asaram to justice for the rape of the girl in Jodphur. In 2013, Mishra was the newly appointed Assistant Commissioner of Police in Jodphur and one of the few women to have this position. She was the lead investigator for the case. Mishra mentions that the death threats she received from cult members were serious enough that she sent her underage son to live somewhere else while she was investigating in the case.
Other people interviewed in the documentary are P.C. Solanki, the attorney for the rape survivor in Jodphur; investigative journalist Bargaav Parikh; Dr. Alexandra Stein, a social psychologist who used to be in another cult; Dr. Mara Einstein, author of “Selling the Sacred”; Ushinor Majumdar, author of “God of Sin”; and S.H. Iyer, attorney for the Vaghela family.
“Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu” has re-enactments that are fairly standard for these types of true crime documentaries. The production is fairly no-frills, with minimal graphics. Throughout the documentary, there are title cards of media headlines about the case. Even though “Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu” does not have any original investigations that uncover new information, it’s still an effective documentary that shows how cult leaders can abuse their power and can be taken down by the right people who don’t give up.
Max premiered “Cult of Fear: Asaram Bapu” on February 6, 2025. The series originally premiered on Discovery+ India on January 28, 2025.