By PTI
CHANDIGARH: A Punjab police SIT team on Monday grilled jailed Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh for more than seven hours in connection with a 2015 sacrilege case.
During the questioning at Rohtak’s Sunaria jail in Haryana, the jailed sect head was asked more than 100 questions by the Punjab police special investigation team (SIT) led by Inspector General of Police S P S Parmar.
The questioning began at 10:30 AM and continued till 6 PM, Parmar told PTI over the phone.
The SIT will now submit a report in this regard in the Punjab and Haryana High Court on November 12, he said.
The Dera sect head has been questioned for the first time in the sacrilege case.
Parmar and three other SIT members – Senior Superintendent of Police M S Bhullar, Deputy Superintendent of Police Lakhvir Singh and Inspector Dalbir Singh – left for Rohtak’s Sunaria jail from Rajpura on Monday morning, officials said.
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is currently lodged in Rohtak’s Sunaria jail since his conviction in 2017 for raping two disciples.
The Dera Sacha Sauda chief had been named as an accused in the theft of a ‘bir’ (copy) of the Guru Granth Sahib.
Last month, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had told the Punjab police that it could question the Dera sect head in jail in the 2015 sacrilege case.
The high court had, however, ordered that Dera head would not be taken to the Faridkot court in pursuance of a production warrant.
The Faridkot court had earlier issued the production warrant against Gurmeet Ram Rahim in the 2015 desecration of Guru Granth Sahib case for an appearance on October 29.
The previous SAD-BJP government had handed over the three cases – theft of a ”bir” (copy) of the Guru Granth Sahib from a Burj Jawahar Singh Wala gurdwara, putting up of handwritten sacrilegious posters in Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala and torn pages of the holy book found at Bargari – to the CBI for investigation.
The Punjab government, however, had handed over the probe to an SIT of the state police in September 2018 after the state Assembly passed a resolution withdrawing consent to the CBI to investigate these cases, noting a lack of progress in the investigation.
In 2017, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was sentenced to 20-year imprisonment for raping two disciples.
Over two years back, the sect head was also awarded life imprisonment for the murder of a journalist, Ram Chander Chhatrapati.
On October 18 this year, a special CBI court in Panchkula had sentenced Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and four others to life imprisonment in the 19-year-old murder case of the sect manager Ranjit Singh.
