By IANS,
Chandigarh: Followers of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect Saturday evening resorted to violence and rioting in various parts of Punjab and Haryana to express their anger over the booking of sect chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on murder charges, police said.
Dera followers, who are popularly known as premis, went on a rampage and burnt eight buses in Punjab’s Moga district. They also burnt buses and destroyed public property at various places in Haryana like Sirsa, Hisar and Fatehabad towns, police said.
Singh was booked by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for the Feb 22, 1991 murder of former dera manager Faqir Chand. Chand’s body was never found and the CBI had conducted an inquiry into this on court orders.
Besides Singh, the CBI had booked four other members of the sect for murder, destroying evidence and hatching a criminal conspiracy.
Dera Sacha Sauda, which has a huge following all over the country, is headquartered at Sirsa town in Haryana, around 275 km from here.