Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for raping two of his disciples, has again been granted a 40-day parole, sources said on Sunday. He is at present lodged in Sunaria jail in Rohtak district, Haryana.
This parole has been granted months after Singh was given a similar relief in August last year. With this, he will be coming out of jail for the 15th time since his conviction in 2017.
The Dera chief was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017 for the rape of two women disciples. He continues to serve this sentence. Singh and three others were also convicted in 2019 for the murder of a journalist over 16 years ago. Earlier this year, he was granted a 21-day furlough in April 2025 and a 30-day parole in January 2025, just ahead of the February 5 Delhi assembly elections.
In a similar instance, he was given a 20-day parole on October 1, 2024, days before the October 5 Haryana assembly elections. In August 2024, Singh was granted a 21-day furlough.
He was also allowed a three-week furlough from February 7, 2022, barely two weeks before the Punjab assembly elections. Before the latest parole, Singh had been released from jail 14 times since his conviction in 2017.
Several Sikh organisations, including the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, have earlier criticised the repeated grant of parole and furlough to Singh. In May 2024, the Punjab and Haryana High Court acquitted Singh and four others in the 2002 murder case of the sect’s former manager Ranjit Singh. The court cited “tainted and sketchy” investigations in the case.
Earlier, a special CBI court had sentenced them to life imprisonment in the same case. The court had held Singh guilty of hatching a criminal conspiracy along with his co-accused.
On many of the previous occasions when Singh was released, he stayed at the Dera’s ashram in Uttar Pradesh’s Bagpat district while out of jail.
The Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda has a large following in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and several other states. In Haryana, the sect has a significant presence in districts such as Sirsa, Fatehabad, Kurukshetra, Kaithal and Hisar.
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