An Indian guru who is already in jail for rape has been convicted for the 2002 murder of a journalist.<\/p>\n
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect, was given\u00a0a 20-year sentence<\/a>\u00a0in 2017 for raping two female followers.<\/p>\n He will be sentenced for the murder on 17 January.<\/p>\n Newspaper editor Ram Chander Chhatrapati was shot dead after exposing abuse at Dera’s headquarters in the north-western city of Sirsa.<\/p>\n Three other men were also convicted of Chhatrapati’s murder – Kuldeep Singh, Nirmal Singh and Krishan Lal.<\/p>\n The self-styled holy man appeared at the court in Panchkula in Haryana state through a video link from his prison.<\/p>\n During the trial, security was stepped up across the state and in parts of Punjab – where most of Dera’s followers live.<\/p>\n Violence erupted after the sect leader’s rape conviction in August 2017, which resulted in the deaths of 38 people.<\/p>\n Soon afterwards, about 50 other women came forward with their own allegations about sexual abuse in the sect.<\/p>\n Ram Rahim Singh, 51, had long painted himself as a pious spiritual leader, encouraging followers all over the world to take vows of abstinence and celibacy.<\/p>\n But this facade started to slip in 2002, with the publication of a letter in a local newspaper.<\/p>\n The article was written by an anonymous follower of Ram Rahim Singh, and published by Mr Chhatrapati in his Hindi-language newspaper Poora Sach – “The Complete Truth”.<\/p>\n It described instances of sexual abuse at the sect.<\/p>\n Anshul Chhatrapati, the late editor’s son,\u00a0told The Print<\/a>\u00a0that his colleagues warned his father at the time to be careful, because “someone will shoot you one day”.<\/p>\n To this, he reportedly replied: “A real reporter takes the bullet, not a shoe.”<\/p>\n Five days later, on 24 October 2002, Dera Sacha Sauda followers shot Mr Chhatrapati outside his home.<\/p>\n Less than a month later, Mr Chhatrapati died – but the letter published in Poora Sach had already sparked a major investigation into abuse at the sect.<\/p>\n Anshul, who was 21 when his father died, took over the running of the newspaper, and pushed for rape and murder charges to be brought against Ram Rahim Singh.<\/p>\n “My father sacrificed his life for truth,” he said in the 2017 interview. “I could not have let his sacrifice go waste.”<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"