The death of two minor boys, who were wards of a gurukul run by Asaram Ashram in Ahmedabad, and the subsequent agitation is poised delicately between dying out and waiting for an eruption.

The bodies of Dipesh Vaghela and Abhishek Vaghela, aged 10 and 11 respectively, were found on the Sabarmati riverbed. The bodies were found mutilated, with internal organs missing in one of them. But the police said it might have been the work of stray dogs. The cops registered a case of accidental death, believing that the two may have died due to drowning. The parents of the boys, however, insisted that they might have been killed during some sorcery rite conducted in the ashram, and agitated for a CBI probe. Praful Vaghela, father of Dipesh, was on a fast alleging that local cops were hushing up the case.

The ashram’s assertion that it was open to probe didn’t cut much ice either with its growing detractors. And even the judicial probe — ordered belatedly by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is considered close to the Ashram — did not cool down tempers. Even Muslim ghettos in the walled city, which traditionally keep away from non-community issues, supported the call for a bandh on the issue.

The agitation — two massive rallies in Ahmedabad and Surat, an Ahmedabad bandh and a Gujarat bandh — threatened to head for an anti-climax after Modi summoned the agitating Vaghelas to his bungalow on July 22 and successfully persuaded them to discontinue their fast.

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