CHANDIGARH: After being granted a 30-day parole, Dera Sacha Sauda Chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is serving a 20-year jail term for raping two of his disciples today walked out of Sunaria jail in Rohtak of Haryana.
This is the 16th time he has been released since his 2017 conviction in a rape case.
He came out of the jail premises around 6:35 am in an SUV amid tight police security arrangements.
Earlier this year, Ram Rahim was granted a 40-day parole in January and before that he was released on a 40-day parole in August 2025, a 21-day furlough in April 2025 and a 30-day parole in January 2025 ahead of the February 5 Delhi assembly elections.
According to officers, Ram Rahim will stay at his Dera headquarters in Sirsa during the parole period.
He is not allowed to assemble his followers at his Deras, but he can address them virtually.
He had also received a 20-day parole on October 1, 2024, days before the Haryana assembly polls, besides a 21-day furlough in August 2024 and a three-week furlough in February 2022 ahead of the Punjab assembly elections.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, have previously criticised the repeated grant of parole and furlough to Ram Rahim. He is serving a 20-year sentence after a special CBI court convicted him in 2017 for raping two women disciples.
In 2019, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the murder case of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati, but in March this year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court acquitted him in that case.
In May 2024, the high court had also acquitted Ram Rahim and four others in the 2002 murder case of the sect's former manager, Ranjit Singh, overturning an earlier order of a special CBI court.
The Sirsa-headquartered Dera Sacha Sauda has a large support base across Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and other states, with significant influence in districts such as Sirsa, Fatehabad, Kurukshetra, Kaithal and Hisar.
With the latest 30-day parole, the Dera chief has now exhausted the 10-week parole limit permitted for 2026 under the Haryana Good Conduct Prisoners (Temporary Release) Act, 2022.
Earlier this year, he had been granted 40 days of parole in January. Under the law, prisoners can avail parole for a cumulative period of 10 weeks in a calendar year, split into two parts. Separately, they may also receive three weeks of furlough, which cannot be divided.
The dera chief remains eligible to avail three weeks of furlough this year.
Time spent on parole is excluded from the total sentence period, whereas furlough counts toward the sentence served. This means a prisoner is not required to undergo the period spent on furlough again, unlike parole.
