Panchkula, Chandigarh (February 24, 2013): According to media reports in a setback to Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the head of Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda, the CBI special court here on Saturday dismissed his application for recalling a rape victim for cross-examination.
“The rape case, in which Ram Rahim is an accused, was registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2002 on the directions of the Punjab and Haryana high court” YesPunjab.Com has reported.
“Ram Rahim had moved the application in 2010, stating that he wanted to question one of the two rape victims about a letter which, he claimed, could falsify the rape allegations against him” the report reads further.
Accirding to information the dera head had submitted that the letter, purportedly written by the woman on the last day of her stay on the dera premises, was in her handwriting and she had signed it. Ram Rahim had also claimed that the woman had addressed him as her father in the letter.
The CBI had opposed the application, stating that the accused wanted to humiliate and harass the victim and the letter could not falsify the rape charges.
As per YesPunjab.Com the CBI judge, Najar Singh, dismissed the application on the grounds that the victim’s crossexamination had been done in 2010 and that her handwriting sample was already on record.
Meanwhile, the husband of another rape victim deposed in the CBI court and recorded statements against Ram Rahim.
According to CBI counsel HPS Verma, “He (victim’s husband) told the court that Ram Rahim had raped his wife. He also said that he and his wife were under pressure from his family members to turn hostile. He said in the court that Ram Rahim could also get them killed.”
The victim had allegedly told her husband soon after marriage that Ram Rahim had raped her in 1999. The rape trial against Ram Rahim had begun on February 16 after the high court dismissed a rape victim’s application against calling her to the CBI special court for giving specimen signatures and handwriting.
Recently, RK Bishnoi, a former sadhu of the dera and resident of Diwan Kheri village in Haryana’s Sirsa district, had written to the high court, seeking day-today trial of the case. In his letter, Bishnoi had stated that the dera head was trying to create pressure on witnesses and the state government by gathering huge crowds of his followers.