Chandigarh:
Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim was today acquitted by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the murder case of a former Dera official. Ranjit Singh, former manager of the Dera, was murdered in 2002. A CBI court convicted Ram Rahim and four others in 2021 and sentenced them to life imprisonment. The 56-year-old Dera chief had challenged this conviction in the high court.
The controversial Dera chief is in jail after being convicted of raping two sadhvis at the dera and in the murder case of journalist Ram Chander Prajapati, who had reported extensively on the sexual assault allegations against the influential Dera chief.
The Dera Sacha Sauda, the headquarters of which is located in Haryana’s Sirsa, had made headlines after shocking allegations of sexual assault surfaced against Gurmeet Ram Rahim and the CBI started investigating the matter. In 2014, a decade after the probe began, the Dera chief claimed he was impotent, but the court rejected this. Dramatic scenes played out as a massive crowd of supporters clashed with cops in the aftermath of the conviction.