‘It’s time for payback, Dera men told BJP netas’

CHANDIGARH: The political arm of Dera Sacha Sauda had gone into overdrive just ahead of dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim's conviction in a rape case by a CBI court in Panchkula in August last year. It wanted its supporters across Haryana to approach all BJP leaders, including MLAs and MPs, and tell them that they were in power only because the dera had backed them in the October 2014 assembly elections. Senior BJP leaders had met Gurmeet ahead of the assembly election after which the dera had apparently issued instructions to its followers to back the party.
TOI has accessed a copy of the investigation reports of Haryana police, made after the violence in Panchkula in which 36 people, all of them dera supporters, had died in police firing. This includes transcripts of legal wiretaps by the cops in which the dera's political wing members are heard telling their followers to build pressure on the BJP ahead of the CBI court's order.

One of the transcripts reads: "BJP ki local committee ko, local MLA ya MP ya phir kisi aur se Khattar ko kahlwa do ki ya to faisla hamare haq mein kar do varna aap jano ya hum, apko hamne hi banaya hai" (Go and tell local BJP MLAs and MPs that they should convey to (Haryana CM) Khattar that the decision (court order) should be in our favour. Tell them that they are in power because of us."



'That was why dera supported BJP'

The call intercepts of dera followers show that they were told to contact BJP leaders to ensure the dera chief's acquittal and "to make them realise that this is the time for which the dera had supported them in the elections".

The intercepts of followers from Ambala, for instance, confirmed that there were instructions to contact local MLAs "excluding health minister Anil Vij". The call record of a senior dera functionary Ashok Kumar and another senior functionary (termed party-B) revealed that followers were asked to meet Santosh Sarwan, Aseem Goyal and Naib Saini, all BJP MLAs from Ambala, in groups of 25.

The call, intercepted on August 20, 2017 at 5.23 pm, Kumar says, "All followers should tell them that dera followers are with them and would support them in the future as well. But they should help us now in solving the case against dera chief. The decision of the court on August 25, 2017 should be in our favour for which you can meet either to the CM or even the PM."

Six days before the conviction, a conversation between Subhash Chander and Babru Bhan, senior dera functionaries from Hisar, was intercepted in which Bhan is heard saying, "The local BJP committee or the party's local MLA or MP should be asked to convey to Khattar that the decision should be in our favour otherwise you know that you were made CM by us". On this, Chander says, "It would be better to convey the message through Hisar MLA Dr Kamal Gupta". On August 23, a caller conveyed a message to followers to gather at Sirsa. The person on the other side says, "What if the decision comes against is? The decision seems negative. The caller responded, "The decision has already been finalized by the ministers/judges who were in our dera. The decision would come in our favour. The case was registered on behest of Chautala."

A day before the conviction, an interception of two dera functionaries from Fatehabad revealed that the instructions were to "meet Sunita Duggal (senior BJP leader who lost from Ratia in the assembly polls and is presently chairperson of the Haryana Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation) and other senior BJP leaders to tell them that if they fail to help them in the present crisis, they would not support them in the future".