HC acquits Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim in murder case of sect's ex-manager

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Tuesday acquitted Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and four others in the murder case of the sect's former manager Ranjit Singh in 2002.

The Sirsa-headquartered sect chief, who is also serving a 20-year jail term for raping two of his disciples, is currently lodged in Sunaria jail in Rohtak, Haryana.

"The high court has acquitted him and four others in the Ranjit Singh murder case," Dera chief's lawyer Jitender Khurana said.

He said the arguments in the case had got over earlier and the matter came up for pronouncement of verdict before the high court on Tuesday.

Khurana said a division bench of Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice Lalit Batra pronounced the decision on the appeals filed by Ram Rahim and four others who had been convicted by a special CBI court in Panchkula, Haryana, in October 2021.

The court had sentenced them to life imprisonment in the nearly 20-year-old murder case of Ranjit Singh. He had been held guilty of hatching a criminal conspiracy with his co-accused.

Ranjit Singh, who was also a follower of the sect, was shot dead on July 10, 2002, at Khanpur Kolian village in Haryana's Kurukshetra.

He was allegedly murdered for his suspected role in the circulation of an anonymous letter, which narrated how women were being sexually exploited by the sect head at the Dera headquarters.

According to the CBI charge sheet earlier, the Dera chief believed that Ranjit Singh was behind the circulation of the anonymous letter and hatched a conspiracy to kill him.

In 2017, Ram Rahim was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for raping two disciples after which he was lodged in Rohtak's Sunaria jail.

The Dera chief and three others were also convicted in 2019 for the murder of a journalist more than 16 years ago.