Sirsa dera chief’s parole plea rejected

Sunaria jail superintendent Sunil Sangwan rejected the parole plea of jailed Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on Friday. Sangwan told HT that the medical report does not fulfil the conditions required to grant parole.

On August 5, the dera chief’s wife Harjit Kaur had filed the plea in the Punjab and Haryana high court and sought three-week parole for him as his mother, Naseeb Kaur, is scheduled to undergo treatment for a heart ailment. “My mother-in-law wants her son to remain present during her treatment,” she had stated in the application.

A senior jail official said Sirsa civil surgeon Govind Gupta’s medical report has said that Naseeb, 85, was suffering from a heart ailment, but her condition was not so serious.

“The four doctors who inspected Naseeb at Dera’s hospital in Sirsa, on Wednesday, stated that there is no risk to her life and already there are many people taking care of her. Another reason for the plea rejection was the law and order situation. The Sirsa police have briefed the jail superintendent that law and order can deteriorate, if he grants three-week parole to the jailed dera chief,” the official added.

In May, the HC had rejected Ram Rahim’s parole plea for attending the wedding ceremony of his foster daughters. The dera chief was has been lodged in Rohtak’s Sunaria jail since August 2017 after he was sentenced to 20 years of jail by a CBI court for the rape for his two disciples.

In January 2019, he was sentenced to life for murdering a journalist, Ram Chander Chhatrapati. He is also facing trial in two more cases, the murder of a dera man, Ranjit Singh, and the castration of sect followers.

First Published: Aug 09, 2019 17:39 IST