HC notice to dera head on castration charges

CHANDIGARH: Impleading Sirsabased Dera Sacha Sauda’s head Gurmeet Ram Rahim as a party in a case about allegations of castration of around 400 dera followers at his behest, the Punjab and Haryana high court has issued a notice to the dera head.

The petition filed by a dera follower (sadhu), Hans Raj Chauhan, who claimed to have been castrated along with others, came up for hearing before the bench headed by justice Mahesh Grover on Friday.

Allowing the petitioner’s applications seeking directions to the state government for carrying out his medical examination and also of seven other sadhus, whom he claimed were involved in criminal acts at the dera head’s behest, the bench also issued a notice of motion to Haryana government.

The petitioner told the bench that these seven sadhus, who also had undergone castration at the dera hospital in Sriganganagar (Rajasthan), were Nirmal Singh and Kuldip Singh of Faridkot; Jagdev Singh of Sirsa; Avinash Kumar of Muktsar; Radhey Shyam of Sriganganagar; Iqbal Singh of Hanumangarh, Rajasthan (now permanent resident on the dera premises) and Krishan Lal, now detained in central jail, Ambala. Chauhan, of Fatehabad , has alleged that the dera doctors lured them into castration on the pretext of “reaching God through the dera head”.

The petitioner claimed to have a list of 166 such sadhus with him. The court was informed that sad- hus Nirmal Singh, Kuldip Singh and Krishan Lal were accused along with the dera head in the 2002 murder case of Ram Chander Chhatrapati, a journalist who used to write for the newspaper ‘Poora Sach’.

The court was informed that due to castration, the petitioner and others suffered hormonal imbalance and social humiliation, with the public treating them as eunuchs.

The case would now come up for hearing on October 10.