2015 sacrilege incidents: HC notice on Ram Rahim’s plea seeking transfer of probe to CBI into 2 more FIRs

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Tuesday sought response from the Punjab government on a plea from Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim seeking transfer of probe into two more FIRs registered into sacrilege incidents reported in 2015 in Punjab.

The probe into two FIRs is being conducted by a special investigation team (SIT) of the Punjab Police. These pertained to alleged sacrilege incidents reported on October 20, 2015, (FIR 161) in Dayalpura in Bathinda and November 4, 2015, (FIR 79) incident in Samalsar in Moga.

In Moga FIR, three accused have been convicted and two have been acquitted. In Dayalpura FIR, the trial is going on.

The plea says in none of the FIRs in the challan presented neither the dera head nor associates/senior functionaries are arrayed as accused. Because of the upcoming elections, in a totally illegal, arbitrary and mala fide manner, the state police are now trying to implicate the dera head in these two FIRs, it says, adding that one Pardeep Kaler, who was a former key dera functionary, arrested in some other case, deposed against the dera head in his statement to a magistrate in February and “strangely statements were leaked and published in the media to implicate Ram Rahim falsely”, the plea further says.

Last month, the Punjab and Haryana high court had stayed further proceedings before the trial court in three 2015 sacrilege cases against Ram Rahim. While staying the trial court proceedings, the court had also referred matter to a larger bench to determine if the consent given by the state government for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation can be withdrawn at a later stage by the state government. These FIRs included FIR number 63 registered on June 1, 2015, for theft of ‘bir’, September 25, 2015, FIR Number 117 of anti-Sikh posters and FIR number 128 of October 12, 2015, of sacrilege incident reported in Bargari, all in Faridkot district. On September 6, 2018, through a notification the consent given to the CBI to investigate these FIRs in 2015 was withdrawn and the matter was handed over to a SIT. In these FIRs Punjab Police SIT has now claimed that Ram Rahim was the mastermind of 2015 sacrilege incidents.

Ram Rahim, who was in the news recently due to nine paroles/ furloughs granted by the Haryana government in around six years, is lodged in Sunaria jail of Rohtak, since his arrest in August 2017.

He is serving two convictions of 10 years each (to run consecutively) in rape cases of two female disciples on the dera premises in Sirsa in 2002, awarded in 2017. His two life terms awarded in murder cases would start after completion of 20 years of jail in rape cases. A response has been sought by May 21.