Ancestral village stays peaceful
BIKANER: Even as Gurmeet Ram Rahim’s followers went on a rampage in five states, people in his village in Rajasthan’s Sriganganagar remained calm and wished the battle be fought legally and not with violence.
Ram Rahim was born in Gursar Modia village, 40km from Sriganganagar district headquarters, and studied here until Class 10. A classmate, Suchha Singh, told HT, “We already decided to obey the verdict and we promised peace in our village in our talks with administration and police.”
Singh said the chief is a man with a heart who never even harassed animals. “We are unable to believe he could rape anyone. But we will fight our battle legally, not through violence,” he said.
Ram Rahim left his ancestral village when he was 24 years old and joined Dera Sacha Sauda headquarters at Sirsa in Haryana. The village has a population of around 300 households. There is a 100-bed hospital, a girls’ school and girls’ college, a secondary school for boys, and a stadium in the village. Ram Rahim owns ancestral agricultural land in the village. His cousin, Gurbaksh Singh, a retired schoolteacher, and his son, Gurdev Singh, still live here. A villager Prem Kumar told HT, “Baba always helped the villagers as he treated us as a family. He made a girls’ college and a modern sports stadium, which is like a dream in villages like ours. We are very disappointed with the court verdict .”