Rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim can't be given parole without court permission, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday ruled. This comes after the rape convict was given a 50-day parole in January, which was his seventh parole in nearly 10 months and ninth in the last four years.
The High Court ordered the Haryana government to ensure Rahim's surrender on March 10, the day of the end of his parole, and also asked the state government to seek the court's permission first before granting parole to the rape convict the next time.
What had the government said in January?
Soon after Rahim was granted a 50-day parole in January this year, Haryana minister Chaudhary Ranjit Singh Chautala had said that parole followed standard jail manual procedures. He stated that all prisoners, including Ram Rahim, are entitled to 70 days' parole and 30 days furlough, with parole being optional for the prisoner.
"According to the rules of the jail manual, any prisoner is given parole for 70 days and furlough for 30 days. Furlough is given only once. Parole can be taken twice. It is the choice of the prisoner. There are 23 to 24,000 prisoners in the jails of Haryana and there are the same rules for all. A prisoner who has been sentenced to 7 years can apply through the District Magistrate," he had said.
Rahim's 50-day parole came just 29 days after he walked back into Rohtak's Sunaria jail after spending 21 days out on a furlough.
He has been incarcerated since 2017 in Haryana's Sunaria jail where he is serving a 20-year term for raping two women disciples at his ashram's headquarters in Sirsa.
CBI case against Ram Rahim
CBI had registered the case on the orders passed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in 2003 and taken over the investigation of the case earlier registered at Police Station Sadar in Kurukshetra. 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.
