High Court acquits Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim in murder case of journalist

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Saturday acquitted Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim in the 2002 murder case of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati. The decision overturned the earlier conviction by a special CBI court, which had sentenced Ram Rahim and three others to life imprisonment in January 2019.

A bench led by Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Vikram Aggarwal set aside the conviction of the Dera chief while upholding the guilty verdict against at least two other accused in the case. The ruling was delivered in open court on Saturday morning, while the detailed judgment explaining the reasons for the acquittal is expected later.

Journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati was shot at point-blank range outside his residence on October 24, 2002. The killing occurred months after his newspaper published an anonymous letter alleging that women living as sadhvis in the Dera were sexually harassed and raped by the sect chief.

In January 2019, a special CBI court in Panchkula had convicted Ram Rahim and three others, awarding them life imprisonment along with a fine of ₹50,000. The accused later challenged the verdict in the high court, arguing that they had been falsely implicated in the case.

Ram Rahim is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted in two rape cases in 2017 and is lodged in Sunaria jail in Haryana’s Rohtak. In May 2024, he was also acquitted by the high court in the 2002 murder case of former Dera manager Ranjit Singh, while several other cases linked to sacrilege incidents in Punjab remain under investigation.