Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has authorised the prosecution of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in 2015 sacrilege cases, ANI reported on Tuesday.

On Friday, the Supreme Court lifted the stay imposed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on proceedings against Singh, in three cases relating to alleged sacrilege in the year 2015. The court had also issued a notice to the Dera Sacha Sauda chief regarding the Punjab government’s appeal against the stay on his trail by the High Court.

A series of incidents of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy text of the Sikhs, being desecrated in Punjab began in June 2015 with the theft of a copy of the text from a gurdwara in Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village in Faridkot district.

In September that year, handwritten posters against the Guru Granth Sahib were seen in Burj Jawahar Singh Wala and Bargari villages in the district, Live Law reported. A month later, several torn pages of the text were found strewn near a gurdwara in Bargari. Protests erupted in Punjab against the incidents.

The matter was initially investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Subsequently, the central agency filed a closure report and said that no incriminating evidence was found against the followers of Dera Sacha Sauda.

However, the ruling Congress at the time and the Opposition Shiromani Akali Dal rejected the report. On September 6, 2018, the state government withdrew the consent to transfer the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation and transferred it to a Special Investigation Team of the state police.

This team listed several followers and office bearers of Dera Sacha Sauda in the matter and named Singh as the key conspirator.

On March 11, the High Court stayed proceedings against Singh while referring the petition to a larger bench to determine if the consent given by the state government for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe could have been withdrawn later. The state government moved the top court against the order, which lifted the stay on Friday.

Singh is already serving a 20-year prison sentence for rape and murder. He was released from prison on October 2 after the Haryana government granted him a 20-day parole. Singh has been frequently granted parole in the past four years.

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.