Gurmeet Ram Rahim moves court to quash FIR, HC issues notice to Punjab govt

As per the petition filed at the high court, the Dera chief’s counsels Abhishek Sanghi and Harish Chabbra pointed out that the satsang (religious discourse) where the alleged statements were made was organised on February 28, 2016, and there had been no complaint from any person in the past seven years.

The advocates further submitted that in order to “falsely implicate the petitioner in issues having potential to disturb social fabric on the lines of religion, sect, and caste etc.”, the impugned FIR was registered…and “a portion of the speech wherein a story sourced from historical texts/books was narrated was picked up in isolation to deliberately create a narrative that sentiments of members of the Scheduled Caste community were hurt”.

The entire speech was intentionally not reproduced in the complaint and the opening and closing contents of the speech were deliberately withheld, the counsel said. Even the reproduced portion of the speech does not constitute the offence as alleged and the essential ingredients of the offence of Section 295A IPC are not made out, the counsel said.

“Some persons with vested interests picked up a small portion of the satsang and uploaded the same on YouTube channel DR MSG TOPIC as alleged in the FIR,” the Dera chief’s petition in the high court said. It added that neither Gurmeet Ram Rahim nor the Dera had any connection with the YouTube channel, neither had uploaded any video on the channel, and the mobile number through which the alleged video was uploaded did not belong to the petitioner or the Dera.

The petition said that Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was the spiritual head of Dera Sacha Sauda. “The Dera was established in the year 1948 by first Sant Satguru Shah Mastana Ji Maharaj with the sole objective of getting rid of intoxication, non-vegetarian food and adultery from the society, erasing the difference between upper and lower castes and religion, respecting all castes and religions along with religious sentiments of every person and loving each other selflessly,” it said, adding that Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was appointed the spiritual head of Dera Sacha Sauda in 1990.

A single-judge bench of Justice Sudhir Mittal issued notice to the state of Punjab. The matter is now scheduled for hearing on May 30.