Ex-sadhu wants missing Premi case reopened

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 25

Gurdas Singh Toor, a former sadhu at the Dera Sacha Sauda, who was allegedly harassed by the Sirsa police for over two years in a case of disappearance of another former sadhu Jatinder, alias Gora, in 2012, wants the case to be reopened so that truth should come out.

Toor today alleged that Gora was killed at the instance of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and his body was disposed of because he had threatened to expose the dera chiefafter he was castrated in the dera.

He said that his petition for a CBI probe into the case had been rejected because the dera chief had won over Gora’s brothers, also sadhus in the dera, but now that Ram Rahim has been jailed, the police should revisit the case.

Gora, who was among more than 300 sadhus to have been allegedly castrated on Ram Rahim’s orders, had left the dera in rage as he wanted to restore his manhood.

“I was saved from being castrated because I left the dera a few days before castration as I had come to know about illegal activities going on in the dera. Gora, who wanted to expose Ram Rahim, contacted me and we two started preparing a list of the castrated. We prepared a list of 300 sadhus, including Haakiki Hans Raj whose FIR is presently being investigated by the CBI,” Toor said.

He said on July 4, 2012, when he was sitting at Gora’s photostat shop in Sirsa, dera chief’s confidants Santosh and Phul came and threatened him and Gora to stop doing propaganda against the dera.

They also asked Gora to come to the dera for seeking pardon. Two days later, Gora went missing on July 9 and he was booked for his disappearance on a complaint filed by the victim’s family, Toor said.

Toor’s plea for a CBI probe was rejected by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on the plea that he was an accused in the case and the victim’s family was not demanding it.

“When I was asked to undergo lie-detector test, I put the precondition that Haryana, Punjab or Rajasthan police should not conduct the test. Finally, the CBI was asked to conduct the test and the case against me was closed in March 2014,” he said.

He said though he was declared innocent by the police after two years of harassment, no effort had been made to find what happened to Gora. He demanded that the case be reopened to bring the guilty to book. The CBI is due to submit its 11th status report in connection with the case of castration of sadhus filed by Hans in court on October 25.