Gurmeet Ram Rahim, Dera Sacha Sauda chief, acquitted in journalist murder case
Punjab and Haryana High Court acquits Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in the 2002 murder case of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Saturday acquitted Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in the 2002 murder case of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati. The decision comes more than seven years after a special CBI court had convicted the Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda and sentenced him to life imprisonment. According to Ram Rahim’s lawyer, Jitender Khurana, the High Court overturned the earlier conviction and cleared him of the charges related to the journalist’s killing.
2002 journalist murder case
Journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati, who published the newspaper Poora Sach, was killed in October 2002 after being shot outside his residence in Sirsa, Haryana. The attack happened shortly after his newspaper printed an anonymous letter that accused women followers at the Dera Sacha Sauda headquarters of being sexually exploited. Chhatrapati's family had approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2003, seeking the transfer of the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The investigation was later handed over to the CBI which filed the chargesheet in July 2007. In August 2017, the sect leader was brought to the Panchkula court, where the CBI court judge pronounced the verdict in rape case.
Already in jail serving a 20-year sentence for raping two of his followers, Gurmeet Ram Rahim was ordered to spend his remaining life in jail after the special CBI court in Panchkula in 2019 sentenced him and three others to life imprisonment for the murder.
Even though he has now been acquitted in the journalist’s murder case, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is still serving a 20-year prison sentence. In 2017, he was found guilty of raping two of his women disciples and was sent to jail. Since then, he has been lodged in Sunaria jail in Rohtak, Haryana.