Days before Haryana polls, Dera Sacha Sauda chief walks out of Rohtak jail on parole

Three days before the Haryana assembly elections, Dera Sacha Sauda chief and rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh walked out of Rohtak’s Sunaria jail on a 20-day parole on Wednesday.

During his temporary release period, Gurmeet Ram Rahim will stay at the dera ashram at Barwana in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh. Jail officials said he was sent to Baghpat under tight security.

The Haryana government granted the 20-day parole to him after the Election Commission’s approval while barring him from taking part in poll-related activities, making speeches and staying in the state during the period.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim is serving a 20-year sentence handed down to him in 2017 for raping two of his disciples. The dera chief and three others were also convicted in 2019 for the murder of a journalist more than 16 years ago.

This is the 11th time that he has been released on parole or furlough since his sentencing in 2017. He was last granted a 21-day furlough on August 13 and returned to the Sunaria prison on September 2.

He had sought a 20-day parole ahead of the October 5 Haryana assembly elections and had said that he wanted to stay in Baghpat during the period if the parole was granted.

A parole is for a specific exigency and a furlough, a general break from imprisonment.

The jail department had recently forwarded the dera chief’s parole plea to the office of the Haryana chief electoral officer in view of the model code of conduct for the assembly polls.

Haryana chief electoral officer Pankaj Agarwal had said on Monday that the Haryana government may consider Gurmeet Ram Rahim’s parole subject to the correctness of facts mentioned in his plea and satisfying other conditions with respect to the model code.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim furnished a personal bond and two sureties of ₹3 lakh each for “faithful observance of the conditions” mentioned in the release warrant.

Many of the dera chief’s temporary releases have coincided with either state or local elections or bypolls, and experts link this to his popularity in the certain districts of the state despite the convictions.

The Congress hit out at the ruling BJP in the state for granting parole to the dera chief. “The EC should take cognisance of this matter and stop the BJP government from granting parole to him during the polls. The fact that BJP has to take the help of a murder and rape convict in the election is a blot on the party’s face,” Congress leader Subhash Batra said.