Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim is likely to step out of Rohtak's Sunaria jail on Monday for 40 days, taking the total time he has spent out of prison to 405 days in just over eight years, according to Times of India.
He served a life sentence for murder and a 20-year jail term for rape, has received parole for the 15th time since his first conviction in August 2017.
According to reports, this time he would be granted parole to attend the January 25 birth anniversary of Shah Satnam Singh, the second head of the Dera Sacha Sauda. Ram Rahim is expected to walk out of Sunaria Jail on Monday.
How many times has he been out of jail?
Besides parole in August last year, he was also granted a 21-day furlough in April and a 30-day parole in January, ahead of the February 5 Delhi assembly polls.
Similarly, he was allowed a 20-day parole on October 1, 2024, days before the October 5 Haryana assembly polls.
In August 2024, Singh was granted a 21-day furlough. He was also permitted a three-week furlough from February 7, 2022, barely two weeks before the Punjab assembly polls.
Prior to his latest parole, Singh has come out of prison 14 times since being convicted in 2017.
Sikh organisations, such as Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, have in the past criticised the grant of relief to Singh.
On many of the 13 occasions in the past, when Singh was out of jail, he remained at the Dera's ashram in Uttar Pradesh's Bagpat district.
The Sirsa-headquartered Dera Sacha Sauda has a number of followers in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and other states. In Haryana, the Dera has a sizable number of followers in many districts, including Sirsa, Fatehabad, Kurukshetra, Kaithal and Hisar.
A court in Panchkula convicted Ram Rahim on August 25, 2017, in separate cases of sexual assault on two of his followers.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2019 for the murder of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati.
In 2021, he received another life sentence for the murder of dera manager Ranjit Singh, but Punjab and Haryana high court acquittedhim in that case three years later. T
he dera chief's 2017 conviction for rape had triggered violence across Haryana and Punjab. Clashes between his supporters and security forces following the Panchkula court verdict resulted in over 40 deaths.
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