chandigarh

Updated: Aug 28, 2019 00:04 IST

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Tuesday allowed to withdraw a plea seeking parole for Dera Sacha Sauda sect chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is serving jail sentence after being convicted in two cases of rape and a separate murder case of a journalist.

Ram Rahim Singh’s wife Harjeet Kaur had filed the plea seeking his release on parole for three weeks to take care of his 85-year-old ailing mother Naseeb Kaur.

“In case the opinion by medical experts is that the mother of the husband of the petitioner is critically ill, then the withdrawal of the case today would not be an impediment in consideration of request in accordance with law,” a bench of justice RN Raina said while allowing Kaur to withdraw the petition.

The parole was sought on the grounds that the convict had earned “good conduct remission reports”.

Earlier, the authorities of Rohtak’s Sunaria jail where Ram Rahim Singh, 51, is currently lodged, had refused to grant him parole to meet his ailing mother. The plea was found invalid and was rejected by Sunaria Jail superintendent Sunil Sangwan on the basis of a report of the Sirsa deputy commissioner, who took into account the security considerations and the opinion of the board of doctors who examined his mother.

Harjeet Kaur then moved the high court with her plea saying Singh’s mother was suffering from heart disease and she was not taking treatment in the absence of her son.

In June, Singh had withdrawn his parole plea sought for 42 days for tending to the sprawling fields in his sect’s headquarters in Sirsa town. Before that, the high court had in May rejected his parole plea for attending the wedding ceremony of his foster daughter.

The Dera chief is serving two jail terms of 10 years each for raping two of his women disciples in 2002. He is also serving life imprisonment in the 2002 murder case of Ram Chandra Chatrapati, a Sirsa-based journalist.

(Agencies contributed to this story)