Rampal
A court in Haryana’s Hisar on Tuesday acquitted self-proclaimed godman Rampal, 66, in two cases related to obstructing government servants from performing their duty and wrongful confinement of people at his ashram in Hisar in 2014. The verdict came a day after a CBI court awarded 20 years of rigorous imprisonment to Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in two rape cases.
In 2014, police were ordered to arrest Rampal after he failed to appear in the Punjab and Haryana High Court many times. When police reached his Satlok Ashram in Hisar, Rampal’s followers barricaded themselves inside the 12-acre premises near Barwala town. Power and water supply to the ashram were cut off after authorities realised he would not surrender peacefully. After a two-week standoff with police, Rampal was arrested on November 19, 2014. Nearly 20,000 of his followers were evacuated from the ashram.
After the clashes during the standoff that left five women and a child dead and 200 injured, Rampal was slapped with cases of sedition, murder, attempt to murder, waging war against the state, rioting, illegal detention.
On Tuesday, magistrate Mukesh Kumar acquitted Rampal in two cases registered against him in 2014. Keeping in view violence during appearance of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in the CBI court in Panchkula, court proceedings were held in Hisar Central Jail where Rampal is lodged.
In one case, according to public prosecutor Ajay Choudhary, both eyewitnesses and the complainant turned hostile. In another, the court gave Rampal benefit of doubt. Choudhary told The Indian Express that the state government would appeal the verdict. Rampal will continue to remain in jail as he faces charges in at least half-a-dozen other cases. One of the cases dates back to 2005 when a villager was shot dead in Rohtak district.
Rampal’s Satlok Ashram media in-charge Chand Rathee called his acquittal in two cases a “victory of truth’’. “Rest of the cases pending against our Guru are also baseless,” he claimed.
Rampal is the head of Kabir Panth religious sect. Born Rampal Singh Jatin in Dhanana village in Sonepat district in 1951, he obtained his diploma from Nilokheri’s Industrial Training Institute after which he worked as a junior engineer in Haryana’s irrigation department. He quit in 1995 after 18 years of service.
In 1999-2000, Rampal-led Bandi Chhor Mukti Trust built an ashram in Karontha village in Rohtak district. Arya Samajis opposed it under the banner of Arya Pratinidhi Sabha. “The people of nearby villages are strongly against the opening up of the ashram because the ashram was a place of illegal activities like immoral trafficking of women, weapons and exploitation,” the Sabha said in a petition before the Supreme Court in 2009,
In 2006, one person was killed while 59 others were seriously injured near the ashram in a clash between Rampal’s followers and Arya Samajis in Karontha. Rampal lived in the ashram till 2006 when the district administration attached its properties. In 2013, the administration handed over the ashram to Rampal’s followers in view of an SC order but was forced to close it after violence between the two groups in which three people were killed. Rampal continued his activities from his ashram at Barwala (Hisar).
