When Power, Poverty and Deleted Chats Collide — Reflections on the Delhi ‘Godman’ Case

I read the report about the young student who described late-night WhatsApp messages — “Baby, I love you. I adore you. You look beautiful today” — from the man she trusted as a teacher and spiritual mentor. The story is harrowing in its details: allegations that vulnerable students were coerced with promises of travel and threats of academic failure, that staff abetted the abuse, and that survivors were forced to delete incriminating chats from their phones — devices now sent for forensic analysis ‘Baby, I love you. I adore you. You look beautiful’: New startling details emerge about absconding Delhi ‘godman’.

That short paragraph from the news — deleted chats, coercion, institutional sheltering — brought back a dozen uneasy memories and arguments I’ve been making for years. This is not only a criminal case; it’s a failure of institutions, of digital safeguards, and of a social compact that pretends vulnerability can be ignored.

What stings most is the repeat pattern

I have written before about how institutions — coaching centres, trusts, and even state mechanisms — can create environments where power silences the weak. In my appeal to chief ministers about addressing student suicides and regulating coaching centres, I argued for scalable digital and human supports precisely because institutions often fail those who are already fragile (Mental Health Rules for Coaching Centres — Deadline: 2 Months | Supreme Court Guidelines).

Seeing survivors allege that chats were coerced or erased is painfully familiar to me. Years ago I warned about how messaging platforms and surveillance intersect with abuse — and how legal and technical gaps can be exploited by predators (WhatsApp snooping is a chance to fix our snooping laws). And long before that I tried to wake policymakers up to how much of our lives are quietly recorded and indexed by tech platforms — knowledge that can be weaponised in the wrong hands (Just Ask Google! — what the tech giants already know about you).

If these links feel like a digression, they are not. They remind me — and should remind all of us — that the mechanics of harm today are often digital and institutional as much as they are personal.

Three concrete failures the case exposes

• Institutional capture: When staff allegedly abet or silence victims, the very place meant to educate and protect becomes a site of harm. My writings about coaching-centre regulation were motivated by precisely this risk.

• Digital vulnerability and evidence tampering: Forcing survivors to delete chats is not just cruelty; it’s a tactical move to erase proof. That drives home the urgent need for reliable forensic recovery, stronger obligations on platforms to preserve evidence, and legal clarity about compelled deletion.

• Power asymmetry and economic coercion: The allegation that promises of foreign travel or threats of failing grades were used as levers reveals how economic and academic vulnerability become tools for exploitation.

What I feel validated about — and why that matters

Looking back at my earlier posts, I feel a disquieting sense of validation. I had argued that digital communications would become central to both abuse and to its proof; I had argued that coaching institutions needed rules, counsellors, and tech-enabled safety nets. Now, watching this story unfold, those arguments don’t feel theoretical — they look like missed opportunities.

That validation is not comforting. It engenders urgency. When the warning signs you flagged are realized in a case like this, it means bureaucracies and platforms didn’t act in time — and real people paid the price.

What needs to change — quickly and realistically

I will not rehearse platitudes. But facts on the ground demand these practical responses:

• Strengthen digital-evidence preservation and accelerate forensic timelines: If chats are deleted under duress, law must enable speedy imaging and recovery of devices, and platforms should have clearer, enforceable preservation duties when allegations surface.

• Mandate institutional accountability in educational spaces: Coaching centres and institutes must have transparent grievance processes, independent oversight, and mandatory counselling resources — precisely what I advocated in the context of mental-health regulation for coaching centres.

• Protect survivors from coercive deletion: Legal protections must recognize deletion made under compulsion and treat such acts as further criminal conduct; victims must be offered secure evidence-capture pathways.

• Improve whistleblower and witness protection: Staff who refuse to abet wrongdoing, and students who resist coercion, should be protected, not punished.

A personal note

I am tired of reading the same contours of a story repeated across years: vulnerability, abuse of authority, digital trails that disappear, and institutions that muddle accountability. But I remain convinced that the solutions are within reach — procedural reforms, better digital law, and the political will to fund counselling and oversight in educational institutions.

This case must not be another chapter in a pattern. The detectives doing forensic recovery and the judges who will decide guilt should be supported by laws and policies that make evidence preservation routine, victims safer, and powerful predators harder to hide.

We owe the young woman who had to endure those messages, and those like her, far better.

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh