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Sacrilege conspiracy hatched at sect’s Sirsa headquarters: SIT in status report to high court
Sirsa-based sect head was evasive in his replies and his custodial interrogation is required to unravel the sacrilege conspiracy, says SIT
The conspiracy of desecration of Sikh scriptures was hatched at the administrative block of Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa and that the followers never acted without the permission of sect head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the special investigation team (SIT) probing the 2015 sacrilege cases said in a status report filed in the Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday.
The SIT led by inspector general of police Surinder Pal Singh Parmar submitted the 65-page status report by way of a nine-page affidavit of its member and senior superintendent of police (SSP) Mukhwinder Singh Bhullar. An interrogation report, including a copy of the questionnaire as well as replies, of Ram Rahim Singhwas filed along with the affidavit.
On November 8, the SIT had asked 114 questions from the sect leader during his grilling for more than seven hours at the Sunaria jail in Rohtak.
The probe team also told the bench of Justice Manoj Bajaj that the present petition may be dismissed as the custodial interrogation of the accused (Ram Rahim) was imperative to unravel the conspiracy behind the 2015 sacrilege incidents.
The matter was adjourned for December 17.
“Though Ram Rahim answered all the questions of the SIT members, his replies were evasive. He pretended to be ignorant of the occurrences around him, when the desecrations took place in Punjab,” the probe team report read.
The dera’s national committee members Harsh Dhuri, Sandeep Bareta and Pardeep Kler directed the actual perpetrators to commit acts of sacrilege in a particular area of Punjab, it added. “It is clear that if the planning of the crime was done at the dera headquarters, Ram Rahim was bound to be involved in the whole episode. Keeping in mind his criminal bent of mind since he has already been convicted in three cases of murder and rape, it can be easily concluded that he is the main culprit in all the cases. Moreover, it is an open secret that the dera members did not do a single act without the permission of dera head and were willing to lay down their lives for him,” the SIT further said.
The SIT also submitted the statements of witnesses Pardeep Kumar and Gopal Krishan, three dera followers Jatinder Veer Arora, Prithvi Singh and Mithus Singh Mann, accused in the 2015 Moga sacrilege case and confessional statement of the sect’s state committee member Mohinder Pal Bittu, who was killed in the Nabha jail in 2019.
