Rape Victim’s Account Of How Guru Ram Rahim Raped Her Repeatedly And Finally Got Convicted

The states of Haryana and Punjab are in constant unrest after the Dera Sacha Sauda followers went on a rampage following the news of conviction of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. He was found guilty of raping sadhvis (his female disciples).

It all started in 2002 with a letter, written by an anonymous sadhvi, addressing it to then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana high court. In it, the victim penned a detailed account of her ordeal and the details are chilling.

This letter led to a CBI investigation into the sexual exploitation and rape allegations against the ‘guru’ and 15 years later, he was convicted.

According to a Times of India report, the letter highlights gory details about the religious preacher. The sadhvi had joined the Dera because her family was a staunch follower of Gurmeet Ram Rahim.

Before the incident happened, she had lived there for two years. And when she was summoned to Maharaj ji’s ‘gufa’ (he used to live in underground quarters) on August 28/29, 1999, she felt proud at first.

When the victim questioned if God indulges in such acts, he said,

“This is nothing new and has been going on for years together. Lord Krishna had 360 gopies and daily made love to them, yet the people worship him as God.”

In the second page of the letter, she said how he used to claim her to be his property and how she was raped repeatedly for the next three years. He even threatened to kill her if she told her family about it, who had “intense faith in him and would never dare to go against him”. He also claimed that no one would dare to go against him. A Republic report read,

“Since the politicians take money, and support from me, they would never, go against me. He said he would get my family members fired from their jobs or get them killed by his Sevadaars’ (goons) and would leave no evidence whatsoever.”

In her letter, she had also cited some instances where girls who objected to these activities were harassed and beaten up.

In a deposition before CBI judge A.K. Verma on February 28, 2009, the victim’s statements revealed that the code for rape was ‘Pitaji’s maafi‘. Earlier, she didn’t understand what other female disciples meant when they asked her if she had been “granted maafi by pitaji?”. It was later when she realised that it was a code.

When her brother, who too was a member of the Dera, got to know about his sister’s plight, he took her away from there. Later, he got her married. He became determined to expose Maharaj’s wrongdoings but was killed on July 10, 2002. It was after his death that the sadhvi became more determined to seek justice.

In a Tribune India report, a Kurukshetra-based lawyer Sudesh Kumari said,

CBI DIG, Mulinja Narayanan was given the case in 2007. He was pressurised to ‘close’ it down. But he did not give in to the pressure of MPs & MLAs.

The Panchkula CBI court found Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh guilty of the rape charges. After his conviction, his followers reacted violently and the Dera violence claimed as many as 31 lives while injuring hundreds.