On 20th August, six culprits of one of the largest sex scandals in the nation, which took place in Ajmer 32 years ago, have been sentenced to life in jail by the district court. They also have to pay a fine of Rs 5 lakh. The convicts in the matter who got life sentences are  Nafees Chishti, Naseem alias Tarzan, Salim Chishti, Iqbal Bhati, Sohil Gani, and Syed Zameer Hussain. They were found guilty of the crime on 20th August after the trial ran for 32 years. A total of 12 accused were named in multiple chargesheets in the Ajmer Sex Scandal of 1992.

Four other accused in the matter have already been sentenced. Several charged in the case were linked to the Congress Party. The main accused, Farooq Chishti, served as the President of the Ajmer Youth Congress. Nafees Chishti held the position of Vice President of the Ajmer Indian National Congress, while Anwar Chishti was the Joint Secretary of the Ajmer Indian National Congress.

As the victims of the Ajmer Sex Scandal finally got justice, here is how the scandal happened, how it came to public light and what chronologically conspired after that.

How it all started

It all started with Farooq Chishti grooming a female student of Sophia Senior Secondary School and raping her. He took objectionable photographs of the minor and threatened her to introduce other girls to him. Later, those girls were raped and blackmailed as well.

Farooq Chishti was the president of the Ajmer Youth Congress while two other accused, Nafis Chishti and Anwar Chishti were the vice-president and joint secretary respectively of the city Congress unit. In this case, some of the accused were the Chishti Khadims (caretakers) of the Ajmer Dargah.

Reports of Ajmer Sex Scandal that shook the nation

In April 1992, Ajmer woke up to a shocking story of sexual exploitation of over 100 women aged 17 to 20. Notably, some of the later reports claimed the number could be as high as 250.

The story was written by journalist Santosh Gupta and it was published in Dainik Navjyoti. The report revealed that hundreds of schoolgirls were sexually exploited by the accused. They recorded the sexual assaults and used them to blackmail the girls to bring more girls to them.

Daughters of big leaders in Ajmer also became victims of the scandal and the story was published with the title “Daughters of big leaders are victims of blackmail’.

All the victims were students of different schools in Ajmer. They were exploited by the people who were in higher positions both financially and politically. After the report was published, the accused reportedly tried to erase the evidence. The officials who were involved in the scandal tried to save themselves and the family members of the victims were threatened, moved out and forced to remain silent.

One of the biggest shocks for the people of Ajmer was that families of influential Khadims of Ajmer Dargah or the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti were involved. These khakis identify themselves as the descendants of the original followers of the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti. Two names that made headlines for their involvement were Farooq Chishti and Nafis Chishti, who were Youth Congress leaders at the time when the scandal came to light.

What followed next was another saga of political influence and administrative incompetence. There are speculations that the matter was suppressed to the point that many witnesses and victims turned hostile, and many details got buried. The witnesses and victims were threatened and blackmailed as well to stop them from coming forward. Some of them turned hostile due to social stigma.

At that time, Bairon Singh Shekhawat of the Janata Party was the chief minister of the state. When he learned about the scandal, Shekhawat gave strict instructions to the investigation officers not to spare anyone. However, the district police officials were reportedly more inclined to save their jobs and did not take swift action. Meanwhile, the accused got a chance to destroy the evidence that could be used against them.

After 15 days of no action in Ajmer Sex Scandal, Santosh Gupta wrote another report and questioned how the culprits who blackmailed so many schoolgirls were roaming free. The report titled ‘How did those who blackmail girl students remain free?’ was accompanied by blurred photographs of the girls. These were the same photographs that were used to blackmail the schoolgirls.

The shockwaves did not stop there. In the next report, Gupta revealed that CID was aware of the matter for over five months and the next report revealed that then-home minister of Rajasthan, Digvijay Singh had seen the obscene photographs 90 days before the report of the scandal came out. These reports were more than enough to intensify the anger among the public leading to immense pressure on the government. A notable fact in the case was that most of the accused men were Muslims and the majority of the victims were Hindus.

The editor of Navjyoti, Deenbandhu Chaudhary, had admitted that the local law enforcement authorities were aware of the scandal almost since a year before the story broke, but they allowed the local politicians to stall the investigations. Even Choudhary himself was hesitant before running the story, the reason was the perpetrators of the crime belonged to the family of ‘Khadims’. Khadims are the families of traditional caretakers of the Ajmer Dargah, they claim to be the direct descendants of the first followers of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisty and hold significant influence in the local communities. The police had stalled the case because the local politicians warned action against the accuse would lead to massive communal tension. Chaudhary stated that finally, they decided to go ahead with the story because that seemed to be the only way to wake the local administration into action.

The state administration came into action to control the situation. Then District Collector Aditi Mehta and then-Superintendent of Police MN Dhawan held a meeting with a delegation of lawyers. The meeting led to sending the accused to jail under National Security Act.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader and office bearer of Vishwa Hindu Parishad Veer Kumar was also part of the meeting. He revealed that the sexual exploitation of Hindu girls by Muslim men was reported by Gupta long before the scandal came to light.

During that period, Inspector General of Police, Omendra Bhardwaj, claimed in a press conference that the scandal was “not as big as publicised”. He also raised questions about the characters of the four girls whose photos were used to blackmail them. He claimed that their character was “suspicious”. His statement did not go well with the public and a series of protests took place across the state.

On 20th May 1992, after a month of reports and protests over Ajmer Sex Scandal, the matter was handed over to CID by CM Shekhawat. Initially, an FIR was registered by Ajmer District Police under then-Deputy Superintendent Hariprasad Sharma. The FIR read, “In Ajmer, schoolgirls were somehow trapped and obscene photographs were taken. After that, they were blackmailed as well and sexually abused. Along with this, information has been received that the gang is pressing the girls to bring others in the net.”

The FIR further mentioned that influential men were involved in the scandal and few of the victims were identified from the photos. On 31st May 1992, senior IPS officer NK Patni and his team reached Ajmer and took over the investigation. CID’s investigation revealed the involvement of Youth Congress leaders Farooq Chishti and Nafis Chishti, Joint Secretary Anwar Chishti Almas Maharaj and others. The manager of the photo studio where photographs were printed, Harish Tolani, was also named as one of the accused. Another grim realisation was that many of the victims, being young and vulnerable, had already committed suicide. Though several of the other victims were identified, they refused to come forward. Only a handful of girls came forward and gave statements. Out of those, only a few continued to fight the case.

The explopitation by ‘journalists’

The most disturbing part of the Ajmer Sex Scandal has been the quiet suffering of the victims. Small time tabloids were quite a sensation in Ajmer at that time. As if the mass exploitation of hundreds of girls was not enough of a blow to the town’s conscience, many victims were even allegedly blackmailed further by these tabloids and local papers. They had access to the explicit images of the girls, and the owners and publishers sought money from the families of the girls to keep them hidden. As per a report in India Today, Madan Singh, the chief editor of one of such papers, named ‘Lehron Ki Barkha’ was one of such people. He had been blackmailing many girls demanding money, threatening to release their pictures otherwise. Most of the girls had given in, while one victim, Pushpa Dhanwani had come forward and lodged an FIR against him. Madan Singh was assassinated in 1992 in his hospital bed while recovering from an injury he sustained from a previous attack. His sons avenged his murder in January 2023.

Sentencing of the accused

In 1998, the rights of the accused were sent to life imprisonment. However, four of them were acquitted by the Rajasthan High Court in 2001. In 2003, the other four accused’s sentence was reduced to 10 years. Out of 250 reported victims, only 12 filed complaints. It took the Indian Judicial System 32 years to punish the remaining six culprits. Even now, they have the option to approach the High Court and then the Supreme Court. Farooq Chishty, who was earlier declared mentally unstable, was convicted by a fast track court in Ajmer in 2007. In 2013, the Rajasthan High Court upheld the decision though it reduced the period of the sentence from life imprisonment to the period already served by him.