With unsettling regularity, the gates of a high-security Indian prison open to release a man convicted of rape and murder, not into obscurity, but back onto a public stage. Each time, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh steps out to preach virtue to millions of devoted followers, reinforcing a reality that many Indians find harder to accept with every parole order.
Singh, a flamboyant preacher with a taste for spectacle and celebrity, was first jailed in 2017 on rape charges and later convicted of murder in 2019. He is serving a life sentence for the killing of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati, who exposed allegations of sexual abuse inside Singh’s spiritual organization, Dera Sacha Sauda. Yet despite those convictions, Singh has been released on parole 15 times. In total, he has spent more than 400 days outside prison.
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