Dera Sacha Sauda chief and rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has been granted a 21-day furlough, again. The rape convict was seen arriving at the Dera ashram at Barnawa area of Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat on Tuesday.
He had been granted a 50-day parole on January 19.
The chief of the Sirsa-headquartered Dera sect was 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".
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in June moved the high court and sought directions to be granted a 21-day furlough.
On February 29, the high court directed the Haryana government not to grant further parole to the Dera Sacha Sauda chief without its permission.
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is lodged in the Sunaria jail of Haryana's Rohtak district for his 20-year sentence for raping two of his disciples. He was sentenced in 2017.
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh 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 Singh and four others in the 2002 murder of the sect's former manager Ranjit Singh, citing "tainted and sketchy" investigations in the matter. Singh had been held guilty of hatching a criminal conspiracy with his co-accused.
A special CBI court had sentenced them to life imprisonment in the nearly 20-year-old murder case.
