CHANDIGARH: Days, after the Supreme Court vacated a stay on the prosecution of Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the Aam Aadmi Party-led Punjab Government, has given prosecution sanction of Singh in the three sacrilege incidents that happened in 2015.
Along with Ram Rahim Singh, the government also granted sanction to prosecute three national committee members of dera-Pardeep Kler, Harsh Dhuri and Sandeep Bareta. However, Dhuri and Bareta are still absconding, Kler was arrested on February 16 this year, said sources.
Sources said that the Punjab home department held by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann gave the prosecution sanction on Monday evening which has been caught in legal tangle since long.
The home department sanctioned prosecution under Section 196 (prosecution for offences against the state and for criminal conspiracy to commit such offence) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
The sanction is granted to prosecute the accused under sections 295-A and 120B of IPC (being party to a criminal conspiracy to commit an offence) so that the competent court can try the accused under sections 380 of IPC (theft), 295-A, 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence or giving false information), 414 (assisting in concealment of stolen property), 451(trespass) and 120,’’ said an officer.
Earlier, the state government had moved to the Supreme Court seeking a stay in the Punjab and Haryana High Court order, which had paused proceedings in three criminal cases related to the incidents in March this year.
A four-member special investigation team headed by Additional DGP SPS Parmar has registered a case under Section 295 of the IPC against Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in 2022, terming him as the main conspirator in the sacrilege cases. According to the report, he was among the twelve people three sacrilege incidents of 2015 that had caused outrage among the Sikh community which led to protests, clashes with the police and subsequently death of two protesters in police firing.
The first case took place on June 2, 2015, when a Bir of holy Guru Granth Sahib was stolen from a gurdwara in Burj Jawahar Ke village in Faridkot and the second case was regarding pasting posters against the sikh religion and the sikh community outside a gurdwara in Bargari village in Faridkot. While the third case pertains to after-torn pages of a bir were found near gurudwara at Bargari village as the case was registered at Bajakhana police station.
