The Punjab-Haryana High Court has pronounced its verdict on the CBI’s petition filed against the Panchkula CBI court’s order to hand over the case diary and copies of witness statements to Sauda Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim. The case of castration of sadhus has been reserved.
The High Court had stayed the hearing of this case in 2019 on this petition of the CBI, since then the hearing of this case has been on hold. Now the hearing can start soon after the verdict of this case.
What are the allegations made in the petition
A petition was filed in the High Court regarding the expulsion of sadhus from the dera. In this case, the petitioner Hansraj Chauhan (a former devotee of Dera Sirsa), a resident of Tohana town in Fatehabad, Haryana, had alleged that 400 sadhus were being made impotent in the name of connecting them with God in the ashram. The petitioner had said that he himself had become a victim of this and strange changes had started happening in his body. The High Court had ordered a CBI investigation after a long hearing of the case.
After the orders, the CBI started the investigation and presented a chargesheet in the trial court. According to the CBI chargesheet, Ram Rahim had made the sadhus impotent and bought land in their names. The deal has been revealed from the statements of six sadhus about this impotent army of Sadh Ram Rahim. The Dera chief used to keep the impotent sadhus near his cave. He used to castrate the sadhus to keep them away from the sadhus.
According to the chargesheet, the practice of castrating the sadhus began in 1999. When the Dera chief came to know about the increasing closeness of the sadhus with the sadhus, he told the sadhus about the way to reach God through the ‘castration method’. In fact, in 1999, Sadhu Baljinder Singh, Ram Rahim’s security guard, saw a sadhu talking suspiciously to a dera servant and his complaint reached Ram Rahim. Since then, the practice of castrating the sadhus in the dera had started.
The chargesheet filed by the CBI states that any sadhu who refused to be castrated was forcibly operated on. Since then, this case has been going on in the CBI court in Panchkula.
The CBI court had on February 16, 2019 ordered to provide a copy of the diary and witness statements of this case to the Dera chief. This order of the CBI court was challenged by the CBI in the High Court. At that time, the High Court had stayed the hearing of this case and now the High Court has reserved its decision in this matter.
