Baba Ramdev got ashram land from dance bar owner

At least one of Baba Ramdev’s disciples has had a chequered past. Sudhakar Shetty, an avowed follower of the yoga guru, used to own the infamous ‘Deepa ladies bar’ in Mumbai’s Vile Parle area.

In 2008, Shetty decided to convert the bar into an ashram following the Maharashtra government’s crackdown on dance bars across Mumbai. Shetty donated it to Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth and the ashram was inaugurated by the Baba himself. The latter has maintained that he had nothing to do with the bar as someone else had been operating it, a claim that is taken with a pinch of salt.

Shetty, who now claims to run a real estate firm involved in several multi- crore projects, got several threats from the underworld and had police protection. Deepa Bar was considered the second best in Mumbai after Topaz at Grant Road. Deepa Bar’s fame had spread so far and wide that top diamond merchants from Gujarat used to visit it. These uberrich would splurge crores of rupees in cash in the bar. Some bar girls were reportedly given flats in posh Mumbai localities on their birthdays.

And it was not just businessmen. Several politicians and their sons were among the patrons of the bar. For instance, the son of a former Haryana chief minister was among its regular visitors.

Ramdev might claim that his disciple did not do anything wrong but earn money just like everyone else did before the dance bars were banned in the city, but the fact remains that the money spent in Mumbai’s bars was ill- gotten.

“ I don’t want to single out Deepa. But the fact is that most of the money splurged on women in the bars was not earned the legal way. A number of government officials and contractors would come and spend money on dancers. They could not have done so with the salaries they got,” said a bar owner in Mumbai.

Deepa had found itself on the wrong side of law on numerous occasions. In 2005, the Mumbai police reached its gates during investigations into a cricket match fixing scandal. It was revealed that a film actor from Mumbai often used to entertain a cricketer ( an ace spinner) from Sri Lanka in the bar.

The Income Tax department also launched a probe after it came to light that one of the dancers, Tarannum, earned huge sums of money while working in the bar. There were also allegations that the bar had underworld links. In 2005, a firing incident took place in the bar in which some underworld elements were involved. Mumbai’s dance bars used to earn a lot by way of selling liquor at exorbitant prices and from the cash that was literally showered upon the girls by the patrons.

A bottle of beer which was available for Rs. 200 in the market would be sold at thrice the rate and if the bar has some famous girls — like Tarannum in Deepa Bar’s case — the prices would be even higher.

The dancers were not given a fixed salary. Instead they are given a part of the money their patrons spent on them. Usually, a dancer was paid 30 per cent of the cash that she could get her patron to spend.