The Punjab and Haryana High Court has acquitted Dera Sacha Saud chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in connection with the 2002 journalist’s murder case, the sect chief’s lawyer Jitender Khurana said on Saturday.
The court acquitted the Dera chief more than seven years after he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, news agency PTI reported.
“The court acquitted him of the murder of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati,” Khurana said.
What is the case of the murder of a journalist?
Ram Rahim Singh and three others were convicted in 2019 of murdering a journalist in Haryana’s Sirsa.
Ramchandra Chhatrapati, a journalist from Sirsa, was shot dead outside her home in October 2002 after his newspaper “Poora Sach” published an anonymous letter recounting the alleged sexual exploitation of followers at the Dera headquarters in Sirsa.
In 2019, a special CBI court found Ram Rahim guilty and awarded life imprisonment in the case.
Along with Ram Rahim, three other convicts – Kuldeep Singh, Nirmal Singh and Krishan Lal were also found guilty in the murder case and were sentenced to life imprisonment.
The court also imposed a fine ₹50,000 each.
On Saturday, March 7, a division bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagua and Justice Vikram Aggarwal of the Punjab and Haryana High Court delivered the verdict acquitting Ram Rahim.
Singh is also serving a 20-year prison sentence in 2017 for raping two of his students. He was lodged in Sunaria jail in Haryana’s Rohtak after his conviction in the case.
