File image of the Supreme Court of India | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrint
File image of the Supreme Court of India | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrint
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to grant parole to self-styled Godman Rampal from Haryana, who is undergoing life imprisonment in murder cases.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices R Subhash Reddy and A S Bopanna dismissed the plea of Rampal seeking parole to attend the wedding of his granddaughter, scheduled for Wednesday.

On October 17, 2018, engineer-turned self-styled godman Rampal and his 13 followers were sentenced to life imprisonment in a second case of murder registered at Barwala police station in the Hisar district of Haryana on November 19, 2014.

Rampal and his followers were convicted under charges of murder, wrongful confinement of people and criminal conspiracy.

A woman was found dead at Rampal’s Ashram in Hisar district on November 19, 2014. Rampal was arrested the same day for murder and other charges were slapped on him.

He was also sentenced for life in another case of murder on October 16, 2018, involving the death of four women and a child at the Hisar ashram on November 18, 2014.

On October 11, 2018. Rampal and some of his followers had been convicted in two separate cases of murder and other offences, including wrongful confinement of his victims at his Ashram in Hisar.

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He and his followers since their arrest in November, 2014, were convicted after nearly a four-year trial by the lower court in Haryana in 2018.

The two murder cases against Rampal and his followers were filed at Barwala police station on November 19, 2014.

Besides the murder charges, the Barwala police had also invoked the offence of wrongful confinement, among others, in the two FIRs.

In November 2014, as the police arrested Rampal, holed up inside his ashram, his followers and devotees, numbering more than 15,000, surrounded the sprawling 12-acre hermitage to prevent the godman’s arrest.

Six persons five women and an infant were killed in the ensuing violence.

Before becoming a self-styled godman, Rampal worked as a junior engineer in a Haryana government department for 15 years before quitting in May 1995.

He later set up an Ashram in Barwala area in Hisar district and another one in Rohtak district and gradually gained popularity as a spiritual leader.

He took to full-time preaching, touring the villages and the cities across Haryana.

 

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