HC Acquits Gurmeet Ram Rahim in Case Pertaining to 2002 Murder of Journalist

New Delhi: On Saturday (March 7), the Punjab and Haryana high court acquitted Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in the 2002 case pertaining to the murder of a journalist, for which he was serving a life sentence at the Sunaria jail in Haryana. Singh will still remain in prison, however, as he is also currently serving a 20-year jail term for raping two of his female disciples, for which he was convicted in 2017.

In 2019, Singh was convicted for the murder of journalist Ramchander Chhatrapati in Haryana’s Sirsa – 17 years after Chhatrapati was shot in October 2002, after his evening newspaper Poora Sach published an anonymous letter narrating the alleged sexual exploitation of women followers at the Dera headquarters in Sirsa. Chhatrapati was shot five times outside his house and succumbed to his injuries a few days later.

Singh was then convicted under Sections 302 (murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), along with three others, and later sentenced to life imprisonment by a special Central Bureau of Investigation court in Panchkula.

A Bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Vikram Aggarwal acquitted Singh on Saturday, while dismissing the appeals of the two other accused, leaving their life sentences intact. The third accused in the case had passed away in 2024.

The Hindu reported that Singh's counsel Jitender Khurana told media persons on Saturday they have “always asserted that allegations against him were false”.

Singh was in the news two months ago when he walked out of the Sunaria jail in Haryana on January 5, after being granted a 40-day parole. It was the 15th time that the cult leader had been released on parole since his conviction in 2017.

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