Punjab: 2025 sexual harassment case: Jailed pastor Bajinder brought to Kapurthala
Deputy superintendent of police Deep Karan Singh said the pastor was produced in a local court in Kapurthala, which sent him to judicial custody
Self-styled pastor Bajinder Singh, 42, who is serving life sentence in a 2018 rape case, was brought to Kapurthala on a production warrant from Mansa jail late Wednesday night, in a separate sexual harassment and stalking case.
According to the complaint filed by a 22-year-old woman in February this year, Bajinder allegedly sent vulgar messages and touched her inappropriately multiple times since 2020. As per the woman, she was a minor when the harassment began.
This comes at a time when two other pastors in Punjab are in the dock in sexual harassment cases – the first a pastor from Gurdaspur who is accused of raping a 22-year-old woman in 2023, and the second, a pastor from Dera Baba Nanak, Manjit Singh, who is accused of kidnapping, raping and forcefully converting a woman.
Bajinder owns the Church of Glory and Wisdom at Jalandhar’s Tajpur and New Chandigarh, with 20 branches across India and 12 overseas.
The woman told the police that she and her parents started visiting the church in 2017 and was part of the self-styled preacher’s worship team from 2020 to 2022. During this period, the accused allegedly took her phone number and began contacting her.
“While talking to me over the phone, the accused would initiate vulgar conversations, to which I always objected,” the woman told police.
“In 2022, I attended his congregations on Sunday, where he used to touch me inappropriately when I was alone in his cabin.”
An official said that investigators have collected all the telephone records of Bajinder Singh and got it verified by forensic experts.
The case has been registered under Sections 354 A (sexual harassment), 354D (stalking) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. A three-member special investigation team (SIT) has been formed to probe the allegations.
Deputy superintendent of police Deep Karan Singh said the pastor was produced in a local court in Kapurthala, which sent him to judicial custody.
Not new to controversies
Hailing from Haryana, Bajinder had adopted Christianity and become a self-styled preacher in 2012, practising ‘miracle healing’ and claiming to cure fatal diseases, paralysis and other ailments through prayers at his congregations.
In 2022, a Delhi family alleged that Bajinder had taken money from them for treating their daughter, who was suffering from cancer through prayers but failed. In February 2023, the income tax sleuths raided his New Chandigarh residence and the church.
On March 25, he landed in a fresh controversy when he was booked for assaulting a man and woman in his office went viral on social media platforms.
On April 1, a Mohali court had awarded him life imprisonment till death in a 2018 rape case. The woman, who worked as a domestic help and was one of his followers, had told the police that Bajinder first raped her at his rented flat in Sector 63, Chandigarh, on September 7, 2017, and recorded a video of the assault. He threatened to post the video on social media if she complained or did not give in to his demands. After that, he sexually assaulted her repeatedly.
