By IANS
Sirsa (Haryana) : A Punjab Police team arrived here Friday morning to interrogate chief of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect, Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh, in a case of hurting religious sentiments of the Sikh community by portraying himself as Sikh guru Gobind Singh.
Hundreds of sect followers gathered at the sprawling headquarters of the Dera Sacha Sauda in this town as the police, which had registered a case against the Dera chief in May this year, arrived here amid tight security provided by their Haryana counterparts.
The 20-member team led by a deputy superintendent of police has come from Bathinda, 100 km from here.
The Dera chief is under orders from the Punjab and Haryana High Court to join investigations in the case against him and to cooperate with the police.
Police had complained to the high court earlier this month that the sect chief did not cooperate when they visited the sect headquarters July 30. They said they were harassed at the sect headquarters and frisked by the sect’s private security guards.
The high court had directed the Dera management not to repeat these incidents with the police team Aug 17. The high court has extended the interim bail to the sect chief against arrest by the Punjab Police till September.
He was formally arrested July 30 and immediately bailed out in this case.
The sect chief has sought anticipatory bail from the high court in another Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe regarding two murders and the alleged rape of a woman follower (sadhvi).
A charge sheet submitted by the CBI in a special court in Ambala had named the sect chief and other followers in the murders of former Dera manager Ranjit Singh in July 2002 and Sirsa-based journalist Ram Chandra Chhatrapati in November 2001. The chargesheet also named him in another case of rape of a ‘sadhvi’ inside the Dera headquarters.