Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was released from prison on Tuesday on a 21-day furlough ahead of his birthday on August 15, The Indian Express reported. This is the eighth time he has been granted temporary release in the last four years.

While a furlough can be given without any reason after serving a stipulated period of time in prison, a prisoner is granted parole based on an urgent demand or need. Singh has been frequently granted parole in the past four years.

On Tuesday, the Dera Sacha Sauda chief was released from the Sunaria Jail in Haryana’s Rohtak district at 6.30 am and will stay in Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh, according to the newspaper.

Singh was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment in 2017 for raping two of his women disciples at the Dera headquarters in Haryana’s Sirsa district. In 2021, he and four others were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the murder case of Ranjit Singh, a former manager of his sect.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court acquitted him in the murder case in May.

In June, Singh moved the High Court seeking a 21-day furlough, PTI reported.

On Friday, the High Court said that the application for temporary release filed by Singh will be decided by competent authorities as per the provisions of the Haryana Good Conduct Prisoners Temporary Release Act, 2022, without “favouritism or arbitrariness”, Live Law reported.

The bench left the decision on Singh’s application for furlough to the Haryana Prisons Department.

The court direction came as it disposed of a petition filed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, which manages gurudwaras in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh, seeking the cancellation of Singh’s temporary release.

The committee has on several occasions raised objections against the repeated paroles granted to Singh.

In February, the High Court had told the Haryana government that Singh could not be granted parole without its permission.

This came a month after, on January 18, Singh was granted a 50-day parole. This was his seventh parole in 24 months and ninth in four years.

In March 2023, the Punjab government had told the High Court that granting frequent parole to Singh may lead to law and order problems in the state.

However, the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Haryana government had supported Singh’s parole, saying that the Dera Sacha Sauda chief does not fall under the definition of a hardcore prisoner and cannot be termed a serial killer.

Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana’s chief minister at the time, had also said that he would not interfere with the parole granted to Singh.