Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was born in 1967 in the village of Sri Gurusar Modia in Sri Ganganagar district, Rajasthan, in northwestern India. In 1990 he succeeded Shah Satnam Singh as head of Dera Sacha Sauda, a socio-spiritual organization founded in 1948 and based at Sirsa in Haryana. Under his leadership the dera grew into a large movement that claimed tens of millions of followers. Its teaching mixed motifs drawn from Sikh, Hindu, and other religious traditions with programs of social service, blood donation, and disaster relief. Followers typically address him with honorific titles, and the organization became a significant social and political force in parts of northern India, especially Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan.

Beyond his role as a spiritual leader, he cultivated a public persona as a singer, writer, and film actor. The dera produced feature films in which he starred and released music albums aimed at his following. The organization also ran educational and charitable initiatives and presented itself as engaged in social reform, including campaigns against female foeticide and drug addiction. Critics and former members, however, described the dera as highly centralized around his person, with strict internal discipline and an intense personality cult.

From the early 2000s he faced a series of serious criminal allegations. In 2002 the Sirsa-based journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati published reports accusing him of sexual abuse of followers; Chhatrapati was shot that year and later died of his injuries. Separate complaints alleged rape of female disciples and the forced castration of some male followers. After a lengthy investigation by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, a special court in Panchkula, Haryana, convicted him in August 2017 of raping two women who had been his followers. He was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. The verdict was followed by large-scale rioting by supporters in Haryana and neighboring states, in which dozens of people were killed.

In subsequent trials he was also convicted in connection with the murder of Ram Chander Chhatrapati and in a case involving the castration of dera followers, receiving additional prison sentences. Indian courts have upheld the principal convictions on appeal. He has remained in custody since 2017, serving his sentences in Haryana. His wife, Harjeet Kaur, and other family members have been associated with the dera’s public activities during his imprisonment. He is not a Christian cleric, has never held the office of pope or patriarch, and has not been canonized or beatified by any church; feast days and patronages of the kind attached to Christian saints do not apply to him.