Today, in a dramatic turn in one of the country’s most closely watched criminal cases, the Punjab and Haryana High Court acquitted Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim in the 2002 murder of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati. The Court allowed Ram Rahim’s appeal against his conviction by a CBI court, removing the life sentence imposed in 2019, while maintaining the conviction of three co-accused. With this outcome, the Central Bureau of Investigation faces a major setback, altering the legal course of the high-profile murder case.
The case traces back to the killing of Ram Chander Chhatrapati, editor of the Sirsa-based evening newspaper Poora Sach, who was shot in 2002 after publishing reports critical of the Dera Sacha Sauda. In 2019, a Special CBI Court in Panchkula convicted Ram Rahim along with three others and awarded life imprisonment, also imposing a fine.
Challenging the verdict before the High Court, Ram Rahim argued that his name did not appear in the original charge sheet filed by the state police and that the prosecution later introduced allegations of conspiracy without credible evidence. His counsel questioned the reliability of witness testimony relied upon by investigators and contended that the prosecution had failed to establish any concrete link between the Dera chief and the alleged murder conspiracy.
The Division Bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Vikram Aggarwal accepted Ram Rahim’s appeal after examining the evidentiary record placed before it. During the proceedings, the defence stressed that “the appellant was not at all named in the first charge sheet filed by the State Police in 2002,” raising serious questions about the prosecution’s later attempt to implicate him. After hearing both the CBI and the complainant’s side, the Bench allowed the appeal and set aside Ram Rahim’s conviction, while upholding the conviction of the remaining accused in the case.
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