Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh granted 40-day parole

Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is serving a prison sentence in Haryana's Sunaria jail, has been granted parole for 40 days, official sources said on Friday.

The move comes just ahead of the Adampur bypoll, which is scheduled to be held on November 3.

The Dera chief had earlier come out of prison on a month-long parole in June.

Prior to that, he was granted three weeks' furlough in February.

The sect chief is serving a 20-year jail term for raping two women disciples at his ashram in Sirsa, where the Dera is headquartered. He was convicted by a special CBI court in Panchkula in August 2017.

He was last year also convicted along with four others for hatching a conspiracy to kill Ranjit Singh, a Dera manager, in 2002. The Dera chief and three others were convicted in 2019 for the murder of a journalist more than 16 years ago.