An Epstein in India – Ashok Kharat 

The crimes came to light through his own employee, Jadhav, who uncovered Kharat's practice of recording sexual abuse and weaponising those videos for blackmail. What began as one whistleblower's revelation quickly spiralled into a sweeping exposé of fraud, extortion, and deep political complicity. The scale and nature of his crimes prompted the media to dub him the "Epstein of Maharashtra", a reference to American financier Jeffrey Epstein, who abused and trafficked young women for the benefit of powerful political and business elites. 

The expose of Ashok Kharat shows the structural rot fed by patriarchy, class privilege, and the cynical use of religion. Kharat, a merchant sailor who falsely called himself Captain, relocated to Mirgaon, Sinnar in Nashik district roughly fifteen years ago. He built a Mahadev temple, established the Shivanika Sansthan, and reinvented himself as a numerologist and spiritual healer. Women who were unable to conceive, families facing poverty, workers without employment, that is the desperate, helpless and the dispossessed came to him to escape their troubles, and he exploited them. 

Kharat enjoyed impunity for his crimes as he invited favours of the big and the mighty. Media reports suggest that politicians like Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Ministers Deepak Kesarkar and Chandrakant Dada Patil, including Maharasthra Women’s Commission Chairperson Rupali Chakankar, and dozen others are believed to be associated with him. BJP leader Amit Shah was photographed with him in 2014. Kesarkar himself admitted that at least forty MLAs maintained ties with Kharat.

Kharat took advantage of his political connections and broke several laws to further his organization. Kharat duly became a fixer — acquiring vast land tracts, building a luxury farmhouse, diverting a pipeline to his property while the surrounding drought-stricken region went without access to water. A preliminary SIT investigation has already indicated that NAFED-linked companies were allegedly defrauded of Rs. 1,300 crore by Kharat’s family firms. As the investigation progresses, more such transactions are expected to come to light.

The growing unscientific views and superstitious beliefs among people is fuelled by the political patronage that such “godmen” enjoy. The sexual abuse was enabled by a system that ridiculed women for not bearing children. Fraud was committed against those who desired proper housing, employment security, etc. The “godman” preying on the vulnerable and the desperate.

The RSS-BJP ideological project is foundationally hostile to rationalism, scientific temper and egalitarian social reform. Since the BJP has come to power, the political legitimisation of fraudulent godmen has accelerated dramatically. This is no coincidence. Asaram Bapu, Ram Rahim, Ramdev — the list of criminals and fraudsters for whom state protection was extended under this regime is long and damning. Add to this the felicitation of persons accused of crimes against women, defending Brij Bhushan Singh facing allegations from women wrestlers, or Kuldeep Singh Sengar, the glorification of Manusmriti, the spectacle of Kumbh Mela deployed as political theatre — and a coherent picture emerges. This is not mere hypocrisy. It is a deliberate ideological architecture designed to reinforce caste hierarchy, patriarchal control, and religious obscurantism, because all three serve the interests of capital and the ruling class.

The victims of this architecture, as always, are Dalit women, Adivasi women, working-class women, women from backward communities. Their exploitation is not incidental to the system. It is the system.

While Rupali Chakankar has resigned and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has expressed performative concern, real accountability will come with prosecuting every politician and civil servant who provided protection to Kharat. It means full rehabilitation and justice for every survivor. It means enforcing the Anti-Superstition Act without political exception. It means dismantling the structural conditions that enable Kharats in the first place.

Maharashtra's radical tradition of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Dnyaneshwar Tukaram, Shahu Maharaj, Mahatma Phule, Savitribai Phule, Fatima Sheikh, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Sant Gadge Maharaj, is a tradition of precisely this kind of struggle. A struggle that names oppression structurally, that refuses to separate the woman question from the caste question from the class question. That tradition must be reclaimed — urgently and militantly.