Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim, who has been convicted for the murder of former sect manager Ranjit Singh in 2002 by a special CBI court, will now be sentenced on Monday, October 18. The court reserved its order for Monday and said it will announce the quantum of punishment that day.
Ram Rahim appeared for the sentencing virtually from Sunaria jail in Rohtak where he is serving a 20-year prison term after being convicted in August 2017 of raping two women disciples of his sect. He has also been sentenced to life for the murder of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati in 2002.
Ranjit Singh, who was also a disciple, was murdered because Ram Rahim suspected him of leaking an anonymous letter detailing the sexual exploitation of women disciples in the dera. A month before he was shot dead in Khanpur Kolian village, Singh was summoned to the dera and threatened with lethal consequences but he did not budge and refused to seek a pardon.
The letter, which was purportedly written by a sadhvi, alleged sexual exploitation of women followers in the dera. The matter was probed by the CBI. The investigative agency was also probing the murder of Singh and Chhatrapati whose vernacular production ‘Poora Sach’ was highly critical of the exploits of the dera.
The special CBI judge Sushil Kumar Garg also convicted Krishan Lal, Jasbir Singh, Avtar Singh and Sabdil for the murder of Singh, who was shot dead by assailants at his native village in Kurukshetra district on July 10, 2002. One more accused in the murder case died in 2012.
Ranjit Singh’s son Jagseer Singh asked for the case to be transferred to another court in neighbouring states after levelling allegations against a CBI lawyer, but the Punjab and Haryana high court dismissed his plea, stating that his allegations were based on surmises and conjectures
The self-styled-godman was born in a Jat Sikh family of Gurusar Modiya village in Sriganganagar district of Rajasthan in August 1967 and succeeded his predecessor Shah Satnam Singh Maharaj as the dera chief at the age of 23. He enjoyed bipartisan patronage from politicians who were known to seek his ‘blessings’ and was also provided with a Z+ security cover by the erstwhile Congress government. In 2014, the controversial dera chief came out in support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during the assembly elections which the party won.
