Sant Rampal was acquitted by Hisar court in two criminal cases against self styled godman on Tuesday. Rampal will remain in the jail as other cases are still pending against him. He is accused of the three more cases including a murder case for which verdict is awaited. The Judicial Magistrate Mukesh Kumar granted the relief to the 66-year-old head of Satlok Ashram in Barwala, citing lack of evidence his followers at a makeshift court set up inside Hisar central jail.
In 2014 Rampal the self-styled religious leader was arrested after his in Hisar, 170 km’s northwest of Delhi was stormed by policemen. His followers were armed with lathis, stones, and guns. At one point thousand of them formed a human chain to protect him. The police wanted to arrest Rampal after he ignored more than 40 summons to appear in the court for a murder case. In 2006 he allegedly ordered his supporters to fire on a group of villagers out of which one dead and six got injured. A verdict on the case is yet to be delivered with the judgments on the charges of rioting and criminal. The godman Rampal has been accused of conspiracy in an 11-year-old case in which his followers allegedly opened fire on villagers in Rohtak in which three people lead to death.
The judge had announced the hearing date for Tuesday on 24 August after the police cited tension in the wake of the Dera Sacha Sauda case. The self-styled godman Rampal was arrested after a tense situation for ten days between some of his followers and the security forces that led to the death of five women and one-year-old child.
