Barely four days before Haryana goes to the polls on Oct 5, Gurmeet Ram Rahim, the head of the Dera Sacha Sauda religious order convicted of rape of devotees and the murder of journalist Ram Chandra Chhatrrapati, was granted a 20-day parole. Leave alone the polls, what impact will it have on the pending appeals on the conviction ?
The last time Ram Rahim was granted parole was between January 19 and March 10 this year. His paroles and furloughs have coincided with elections to the assembly or local bodies in Haryana and Punjab. The local Congress party has expressed apprehensions over the grant of parole, given his influence over voters in the Haryana Assembly elections.
However, this time, Gurmeet Ram Rahim has been barred from staying in Haryana, giving speeches or participating in any poll-related activities. He has been shifted to Barwana in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh.
Apart from the paroles and furloughs granted, victims and their families feel that the speedy manner in which his appeals are listed and heard when other cases languish for years are another clear indication of the influence wielded by the Dera chief. As it is, in May this year, he managed to secure an acquittal in one case of murder – of his former manager Ranjit Singh.
Deeply apprehensive about the Dera chief’s pending appeals in the conviction orders for the rape cases and the murder case against the journalist, they have pleaded with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to engage the services of a senior counsel to fight the appeal and get a special legal team to defend the CBI’s own case.
In a letter to the deputy inspector general (DIG) of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Anshul Chhatrapati , submitted on July 24, 2024, the son of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati, has requested the appointment of senior counsels R S Cheema and Rajinder Singh Bains to fight the case as they feared the appeals against the convictions would result in acquittals.
In the letter, Chhattrapati said that, despite repeated requests from the victims , the State/CBI “did not go into further appeal against the order of acquittal of the accused persons” and feared the active collusion between the accused and CBI officers assisting the State in the appeal.
The next date of the appeal in the Chhatrapati case is Oct 21, 2024.
Appeal and Acquittal in The Ranjit Singh Case
On May 24, 2024, days before the Lok Sabha polls in Punjab, Harminder Singh Jassi, Congress MLA from Talwandi Sabo in Bathinda and the father-in-law of the Dera head’s son, defected to the BJP. Four days later, Justice Sureshwar Thakur of the Punjab and Haryana High Court acquitted the Dera Sacha Sauda chief in Singh’s murder case.
Ranjit Singh was shot dead on July 10, 2002 and on Oct 8 2021, a special CBI court sentenced Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and four others to life imprisonment for the murder of the former manager. The Dera had suspected that Singh had leaked an anonymous letter about the sexual exploitation of women followers in the ashram.
On May 28, a division bench of Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice Lalit Batra of the High Court said that the CBI, which took over the probe in November 2023, failed to establish the motive of the crime and said the prosecution case was “shrouded in doubts”.
An appeal challenging the judgement was filed in the Supreme Court. On Sept 9, 2024, a bench of Justices Bela M. Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma issued notice in the plea.
Chhatrapati murder case
Ram Chandra Chhatrapati, the courageous editor of the Hindi newspaper Poora Sach (The Whole Truth) was shot at outside his residence in Sirsa, Haryana, on October 24, 2002. He was conscious and rushed to hospital even as he repeatedly told police that the person behind the shooting was Gurmeet Ram Rahim, the head of the Dera. He had published anonymous letters detailing the sexual exploitation of women devotees in the Dera ashram and had been getting death threats ever since. He even wrote to the then Superintendent of Police, Sirsa, on July 2, 2002, saying that he feared that his daily movements were being tracked. But no action was taken on his letter.
He died on Nov 21, 2002, in Apollo Hospital, Delhi.
It took 16 years of dogged pursuit by his son, Anshul, to get the CBI to stay the course on its own investigation and secure the conviction of Gurmeet Ram Rahim in the murder of his father.
(Read about the case and investigation here and here).
The order is only the fourth conviction of the killing of journalists in India.
Even while serving time in jail, Gurmeet Ram Rahim has tried to browbeat journalists from covering the case. In January this year, journalist Shyam Meera Singh faced a civil defamation suit from the Dera head for his Youtube programme “How Gurmeet Ram Rahim fooled his Bhakts?” He took it down on court’s direction and re-uploaded the programme with a disclaimer.
Anshul Chhattrapati said, in his letter, that the CBI had conducted the investigation in all the three cases (the rape of devotees and the two murders) against the self-styled godman “thoroughly and fairly”, despite being pitted “against such a powerful and politically blessed self declared God without taking any stress and pressure of any kind despite having threats to their life and liberty.”
The letter said that the braveness of the CBI officers had resulted into conviction of all the accused persons in all the three criminal cases after a long legal battle of about 15 years.
However, now the acquittal of the Dera chief in the murder case of Ranjit Singh “was totally surprising not only to the victims of the case but also to the public at large who had faith in the efforts of the CBI in conducting the investigation of the case as well as in the judicial system of the country, ” the letter said.
In the interests of justice, the victims have sought stronger defence of the CBI’s own case. Will the CBI be a caged parrot or will it step up and defend its own case?
