India: A day after Ram Rahim Singh’s sentencing, a court in Hisar is expected to deliver the verdict in two cases against self-styled godman Rampal Dass and his followers today.
Rampal is the head of Barwala’s Satlok Ashram. He is facing several charges including causing hurt, murder, attempted murder, rioting, sedition and illegal detention.
Some of these charges were slapped when he ignored earlier ones.
Before turning a spiritual guru, Rampal, now 66, was an engineer with Haryana’s irrigation department.
Rampal was born to a farmer at a village in Sonepat district of Haryana. Breaking from the traditional occupation, he did a diploma from the Industrial Training Institute (ITI) in Nilokheri, Karnal.
He grew popular after touring Haryana as a bhajan singer, and then drew on his following within the Kabir sect to set up his Satlok Ashram (religious centre) in 1999.
Rampal lived with his wife and two married sons — the couple had four children in total —in Shastri Nagar, Rohtak, at the time of his ‘renunciation’. Eventually, all of his children moved in with him at the ashram.
His website says that Rampal left his “job after having worked for 18 years, so that the people could be shown the true path”.
The first accusations against Dass are when he criticized the Satyarth Prakash written by Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati in 2006. Later, supporters of both groups clashed.
His followers opened fire in a Rohtak village killing one and injuring several. Rampal and 38 followers were arrested for murder, then released on bail in 2008.
He then failed to appear in court 43 times.
When police reached his ashram to arrest him in 2014, massive violence followed. About 15,000 followers attacked security personnel with stones, petrol bombs and clubs as Dass hid. Police used water cannons and baton-charged rioters.
Six people, including women and children used as human shields, died in the week-long stand-off.
Afterwards, several devotees said they had been held in the ashram against their will.
