High Court Acquits Gurmeet Ram Rahim in 2002 Journalist Murder

The Punjab and Haryana High Court acquitted Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on Saturday in the 2002 murder case of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati, overturning a life imprisonment sentence imposed seven years earlier. The decision, delivered by a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Vikram Aggarwal, clears Singh of charges related to the killing in Sirsa, Haryana, though he remains imprisoned on a separate conviction.

Chhatrapati, editor of the newspaper Poora Sach, was shot dead outside his residence in Sirsa on October 12, 2002. The attack occurred shortly after his publication printed an anonymous letter alleging the sexual exploitation of women followers at the Dera Sacha Sauda headquarters in the same district. Chhatrapati's family petitioned the court in 2003 for a transfer of the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which took over the probe and filed a chargesheet in July 2007.

In January 2019, a special CBI court in Panchkula convicted Singh and three associates—Kuldeep Singh, Nirmal Singh, and Krishan Lal—of murder, sentencing each to life imprisonment and imposing fines of 50,000 rupees on the co-accused....