Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is serving a 20-year jail sentence for raping two of his disciples, walked out of Sunaria jail in Rohtak on Monday after being granted a 40-day parole. This is the 15th time he has been released on parole since his conviction in 2017.
Singh will reside at the Dera headquarters in Sirsa during the 40-day parole period, Dera spokesperson and advocate Jitender Khurana said.
Singh and three other individuals were also convicted in 2019 in the murder case of a journalist that took place over16 years ago.
He last came out of jail on a 40-day parole in August 2025. Earlier, he was granted a 21-day furlough in April 2025 and a 30-day parole in January 2025, ahead of the February 5 Delhi assembly elections.
Earlier, Singh was released on a 20-day parole on October 1, 2024, just days before the October 5 Haryana assembly elections.
In August 2024, the dera chief was granted a 21-day furlough. He was also allowed a three-week furlough from February 7, 2022, just two weeks before the Punjab assembly elections.
In the past, Sikh organisations, including the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, have flayed the repeated grant of parole and furlough to Singh.
In May 2024, the Punjab and Haryana High Court cleared him and four others in the 2002 murder case of the sect’s former manager, Ranjit Singh. The court cited “tainted and sketchy” probe and overturned a special CBI court verdict that had sentenced them to life term.
The CBI had earlier held Singh guilty of hatching a criminal conspiracy along with his co-accused in the case. On many of the previous 14 occasions when Singh was released from prison, he stayed at the Dera ashram in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh.
The Sirsa-headquartered Dera Sacha Sauda has a large following across Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and other states. In Haryana alone, the Dera has a significant number of followers in districts such as Sirsa, Fatehabad, Kurukshetra, Kaithal and Hisar.
Also Read: Dera chief Ram Rahim out on parole for 15th time
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