Dera Sacha Sauda chief and rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has been granted a 21-day furlough and will leave jail for the tenth time in the last four years.
He has been granted the temporary release days after the Punjab and Haryana High Court disposed of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee's (SGPC) petition against his temporary release.
The high court on August 9 observed that a plea for temporary release by the Dera chief should be considered by the competent authority without any "arbitrariness or favouritism".
In his petition, he said he needed to participate in a programme hosted by the Dera Sacha Sauda.
The Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Rape Case
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is serving a 20-year sentence for raping two of his disciples and is lodged in the Sunaria jail in Haryana's Rohtak district.
He was sentenced in 2017.
The Dera chief and three others were also convicted in 2019 for the murder of a journalist more than 16 years ago.
In May, the high court acquitted him and four others in the 2002 murder of the sect's former manager Ranjit Singh, citing "tainted and sketchy" investigations in the matter. A special CBI court had sentenced them to life imprisonment.
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's Paroles Before Polls
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh mostly got paroles and furloughs during state or local body polls. He will once again come out of jail ahead of the Haryana Assembly elections, which are due later this year.
The Dera chief, known to have a large number of followers in Haryana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh, was granted a 50-day parole in January.
Prior to that, he was granted a three-week temporary release in November last year, just days before the Rajasthan legislative assembly elections.
He had also come out of jail on 40-day parole in July, ahead of panchayat elections in Haryana.
Singh had got a 40-day parole in January. It was during the same parole period he was seen celebrating the birth anniversary of former dera chief Shah Satnam Singh by cutting a cake with a sword.
In 2022, he got out of jail thrice - first in February for 21 days during the Punjab assembly polls, then in June for a month when civic body elections were held in Haryana, and then in October for 40 days during Haryana by-polls.
Before that, he came out on a 40-day parole in October 2020, when the Haryana assembly elections were held.
In May, 2021, he was granted a 12-hour parole to meet his mother.
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