Gurugram: A day after Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the chief of the Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda who has been convicted of rape and murder, came out on parole on 19 January, he posted a video on his YouTube channel ‘Saint MSG (MSG is the nickname he uses, based on the names of the three chiefs the Dera has had so far — Sham Mastana, Shah Satnam Singh, and Ram Rahim Singh himself)’.
In the 49-second video, which had 362,000 views until Tuesday afternoon, Ram Rahim — currently living at his ashram in Barnawa, Uttar Pradesh — addresses his followers, saying, “Once again, I am back at your service.”
Referring to the Ram Lalla ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony, he added, “Ram ji’s festival is being celebrated across the nation on 22 January.”
“You should all participate in this festival. You should celebrate this festival like Diwali,” he said.
Singh also seeks to congratulate his followers on the occasion of the month-long ‘MSG Bhandara’, or the celebration of Shah Satnam Singh’s birth anniversary (25 January). He also asks his followers to not come to his ashram in Uttar Pradesh.
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, a self-styled godman with considerable influence, is currently out on parole for 50 days. The parole comes just a little over a month after he returned to Haryana’s Sunaria jail on 14 December 2023, after a 21-day furlough.
This is the seventh time Ram Rahim Singh has walked out of jail in the past two years, and the ninth since his conviction in 2017.
In 2022 and 2023, Singh came out of jail on six occasions — on a 21-day furlough on 7 February 2022, on a 30-day parole on 17 June 2022, on a 40-day parole on 15 October 2022, on a 40-day parole on 21 January 2023, on a 30-day parole on 20 July 2023, and on a 21-day furlough on 21 November 2023.
Before this, the Dera chief was brought out on parole for 24 hours in a “secret” manner by police on 24 October 2020. Another one-day parole was granted on 21 May 2021 so he could meet his ailing mother.
The Dera chief is serving 20 years’ imprisonment for the rape of two female disciples, sentenced on 25 August 2017, and two life sentences — since January 2019 and October 2021 — for the murders of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati and former Dera manager Ranjit Singh, respectively.
Given Singh’s brush with politics — he is the only Dera chief who has been known to dabble in politics — his frequent release from jail has created a storm of allegations for Haryana’s BJP government, especially with the Lok Sabha elections around the corner.
Sudesh Kumari, general secretary of the Jan Sangharsh Manch (a social organisation), who led an agitation against the Dera after Chhatrapati’s murder, said it was not the BJP alone but all previous governments that had helped Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.
“The problem with the BJP is that it says something and does exactly the opposite,” she told ThePrint.
“This government brought a law in 2018 proposing capital punishment for the rape of girls aged below 12 years, and here is a man against whom the rape of two of his disciples has already been proved in the courts and the BJP is helping him remain out of jail,” said Kumari.
The BJP-led government, however, dismissed the allegations, saying they had nothing to do with decisions regarding Singh’s parole/furlough applications.
Speaking to ThePrint, Haryana Minister for Jails Ranjit Singh Chautala said the decision is taken by jail authorities and the local administration.
ThePrint also tried to reach some senior leaders of the Opposition — the Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) — for a comment on the matter, but they requested to be excused.
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Political brush
A political analyst who didn’t wish to be named told ThePrint that the Dera Sacha Sauda only started dabbling in politics under Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, saying his predecessors never did so.
Singh took over the reins of the Dera in 1990. While he became a draw for political leaders of the region soon afterwards, he first offered public support to a party in the 2007 Punjab assembly polls.
The Dera supported the Congress in the election, but it was the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance that won.
The SAD, however, lost most of the seats in Punjab’s Malwa region, where Ram Rahim had considerable influence.
Months later, Singh was booked by Punjab Police in a case of blasphemy for allegedly dressing up as Guru Gobind Singh during a congregation at Salabatpura in Punjab.
The Dera subsequently set up a ‘political affairs wing’.
In the 2014 assembly polls in Haryana, the Dera openly supported the BJP, with thousands of Singh’s followers attending a rally held by PM Narendra Modi at Sirsa in October that year.
Before the polling, Kailash Vijayvargiya, who was the BJP’s incharge for Haryana at the time, took 40 candidates of the party to Ram Rahim to “seek his blessings” on 13 October 2014.
That year, the BJP went on to form a government of its own in the state for the first time.
After the formation of the government, more than 18 MLAs and some ministers accompanied Vijayvargiya to Ram Rahim Singh to thank him for his support.
Speaking to ThePrint, Chhatrapati’s son Anshul said the BJP’s relationship with the Dera chief “is a perfect example of quid pro quo”.
“During the 2014 assembly polls, the Dera chief, who claims to have followers in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and some other states, had extended support to the BJP by sending his supporters in large numbers to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Sirsa,” he added.
“Modi, too, had talked of the sanitation campaign by the Dera. Before Ram Rahim’s conviction, several ministers of Khattar’s cabinet visited the Dera to seek Ram Rahim’s blessings. He was also seen with Khattar during a sanitation campaign at Karnal,” he said.
Jagmati Sangwan, vice-president of the All India Women’s Democratic Association (AIDWA), said “everyone knows that the BJP releases Ram Rahim ahead of every election and doesn’t have any regret for this”.
“In March last year, the Haryana government told the Punjab and Haryana High Court that Ram Rahim isn’t a hardcore criminal or a serial killer while defending the parole to Dera chief,” she said.
“We shudder at the thought that a man against whom the rape of two disciples and the murder of two men, one of them the real brother of one of the rape victims, has been proved in the court of law isn’t a hardcore criminal for the BJP government,” she added.
Sangwan said the “BJP has been supporting people accused of rape and sexual harassment to the hilt”.
“Take the examples of the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh (MP and former Wrestling Federation of India chief), and Haryana minister Sandeep Singh, one finds a trend,” she added.
She said this attitude is “precisely the reason that Haryana’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) has seen a decline in the recent months”.
“Such an attitude of the government affects the mindset of people toward the girl child,” she added.
Sudesh Kumari said the “problem with BJP is that it says something and does exactly the opposite”.
‘Nothing amiss’
Speaking to ThePrint, Haryana Minister for Jails Ranjit Singh Chautala made light of the allegations surrounding Singh’s frequent release from jail.
There is nothing illegal in the parole for the Dera chief, he said, adding that it has been granted under the Haryana Good Conduct Prisoners (Temporary Release) Act, 2022.
“Under this Act, a convicted prisoner may be released on parole for 10 weeks (70 days) in a calendar year, and the prisoner may avail this in two parts,” he added. “Similarly, a convicted prisoner may also be released on furlough for a period of three weeks (21 days) in a calendar year and this period cannot be availed in parts.”
The political leadership, he added, “doesn’t even come into the picture”. “The convict applies [for parole/furlough] before the jail superintendent, and the release orders are issued by the deputy commissioner if the convict’s sentence is for less than seven years and by the commissioner if the sentence is more than seven years.”
Chautala said there was nothing amiss about the fact that, this time, Singh was out of jail just over a month after his previous furlough ended.
“The last time Ram Rahim got a 21-day furlough was on 21 November 2023, while now, he has come out on a 50-day parole in January 2024,” he added. “Since the calendar year has changed, there is no irregularity.”
Chhatrapati, however, said the Haryana Good Conduct Prisoners (Temporary Release) Act was amended in 2022 to suit the Dera chief.
“Before this amendment, Ram Rahim’s application was rejected thrice because he didn’t fulfil the conditions under the old law. Once, he applied for release for attending to his agriculture fields, but the report from the authorities said he had no land to his name,” he added.
“The second time, he cited the marriage of his muh-boli beti (adopted daughter), but the report by the authorities said, as the father of two daughters, he was not legally eligible to adopt a daughter,” Anshul said, adding that the third rejected application cited his ailing mother’s treatment.
“But the report of the authorities said the Dera Sacha Sauda at Sirsa where Ram Rahim Singh’s mother lived had a multi-speciality hospital on the premises, and that she had a grandson and granddaughters and their families to look after her,” he said.
After his applications were rejected on several occasions, the government “did away with all these conditions to suit Ram Rahim”, he added.
Reached for comment, a senior officer of the Haryana Prisons Department said on the condition of anonymity that the state government had amended the law “to make it simple and easier for the prisoners to get paroles and furloughs”.
“Before the amendment, we were following the Haryana Good Conduct Prisoners (Temporary Release) Act, 1988. Under the old law, there were certain conditions like death or serious illness in the family; marriage of the prisoner, or their son, daughter, grandchild, brother or sister; for harvesting, sowing or other agricultural operations, or any other sufficient cause, for allowing parole,” the officer added.
“But under the new Act, all these conditions have been removed, because the prisoners used to fabricate documents to apply for parole.”
Sudesh Kumari said it would be foolish to expect this government, or even the political parties in the Opposition now, to do anything (when they came to power) about the Dera chief.
“If he (Dera chief) could finally be punished in 2017, it was because of the judiciary,” she added.
“Even now, one hopes that the judiciary takes suo motu action and takes cognisance of the mockery of the system being made by releasing Ram Rahim time and again.”
This report has been edited to clarify Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s statement to his followers about visiting his ashram. It was not made in the context of the ‘pran pratishtha’ event, as the earlier version of this report suggested.
The earlier version of the report also referred to the Jan Sangharsh Manch as an NGO. This has been updated to ‘social organisation’. A quote of its general secretary Sudesh Kumari, about a law proposing death penalty for rape of girls aged below 12, has been updated to clarify the law has been passed, and isn’t at the proposal stage, as the quote earlier suggested.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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