Rampal the rascal: The great vanishing Baba trick

Baba’s flown the coop, oops, the ashram and has gone full-time fugitive. The Haryana Police which thought Baba Rampal was ensconced within the Satlok Ashram in Barwala village of Haryana’s Hisar district, well surrounded by brave women devotees and children and ex-servicemen armed to their eyeballs with firearms and the more desperate and damage-causing LSD (acid), is proving a hard man to nab since he seems to have vanished into thin air. Hope the police deployed sharp sighters among the many sharpshooters and the riot-geared truncheon specialists who thrashed the media while revving their collective adrenaline to capture the Baba and produce him before the Punjab and Haryana High Court on November 21.

But police have not given up hope, they are certain that he is still hiding in the ashram but there is no word on if all the women streaming out of the ashram had their faces covered. Given the famous cross-dressing of 2011 when another more famous, extremely agile Baba did a Houdini from Ramlila Maidan in a salwar kameez, someone should have put in some women constables to check if all the women were indeed what their attire suggested and not the desperate Rampal sneaking out.

It’s been a massive police action here. The DGP apologised to the media for the sad scenes, yes the scribes can be vicious when one of their kind is thrashed, but maintained the police will catch the Baba and get him to the court. But nightfall is early in North India as the November sun sets early. The hinterland is where the Babas rule, faith shines brighter in darker and denser regions of the country, be it the north or the south, the west or the east. If one is to go by pictures posted on Baba Rampal on Facebook, the guy, sorry godman, must have given the slip some 12 hours before. Miracles can happen anywhere, palm grease usually smoothens such irritating formalities.

Some Baba O'Riley! But the police are still looking for the man, god. Some competition for the soaps tonight.