Dera Sacha Sauda chief and rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh gets 50-day parole

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. File pic

Dera Sacha Sauda chief and rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has been granted 50-day parole, official sources said on Friday, as per news wire PTI.

Singh is serving a jail term of 20-years for raping two of his women followers.

The parole comes just two months after his latest furlough. On November 21 last year after he was granted a 21-day furlough - his third temporary release from jail in 2023.

The Dera chief had walked out of the Sunaria jail on a 30-day parole on July 30, 2023. Before that he was granted a 40-day parole in January last year. In October 2022 too, he was granted a 40-day parole. In June 2022 too he had come out of prison on a month-long parole. Besides this, he was granted a three-week furlough on February 7, 2022.

While parole means the release of a prisoner either temporarily for a special purpose or completely before the expiry of a sentence, on the promise of good behaviour, a furlough is a short-term temporary release of convicts from jail.

During his temporary release period, Singh will go to the Dera Sacha Sauda Ashram in Barnawa in Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat, PTI report said.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted by a special CBI court in Panchkula in August 2017 for raping two women followers at his ashram's headquarters in Sirsa, Haryana.

The Dera chief and three others were convicted in 2019 for the murder of a journalist more than 16 years ago.

It was alleged that Ranjit Singh, a resident of village Khanpur Kolian, Kurukshetra was murdered on July 10, 2002, when he was working in his fields at village Khanpur Kolian of District Kurukshetra in Haryana. After a thorough investigation, CBI filed a charge sheet in 2007 against six accused and charges were framed in 2008 while, on October 8, 2021, the court convicted Rahim and four others in connection with former Dera manager Ranjit Singh's murder case.

(With PTI Inputs)