The Punjab and Haryana High Court has once again reserved its judgment on the appeal filed by Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh against his conviction in the Ram Chander Chhatrapati murder case. The decision came on Thursday after a division bench, comprising Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Vikram Aggarwal, concluded a brief re-hearing necessitated by the “emergence of new facts.”
The High Court had previously reserved its verdict in September 2025 but listed the matter for re-hearing on January 30, 2026, citing the need for clarifications regarding the forensic examination of the murder weapon and bullets. During the resumed hearing on Thursday, Ram Rahim’s defence counsel raised serious questions about the chain of custody of the ballistic evidence.
The defence argued that the bullet recovered from the body of the slain journalist, Ram Chander Chhatrapati, during the post-mortem at AIIMS, New Delhi, remained sealed until it was produced in court. “If the bullet was still sealed with the AIIMS seal when produced, the prosecution must explain how it was examined earlier by a Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) expert,” the counsel contended. They further claimed that the bullets allegedly recovered did not match the revolver used in the offence.
Countering this, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) submitted that the FSL expert’s signatures were present on the revolver’s body, drum, and barrel, proving that the evidence had been properly inspected. After hearing both sides on these specific technicalities, the Bench reserved its final order.
Gurmeet Ram Rahim was convicted by a special CBI court in Panchkula in January 2019 for the 2002 murder of Chhatrapati, a journalist who had published an anonymous letter exposing the sexual exploitation of women at the Dera. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Dera chief is currently lodged in Sunaria Jail (Rohtak), serving a 20-year sentence for rape.
