Three-day search of Dera’s Sirsa premises ends, internet, railway services to resume on Monday
The massive search operations included 41 paramilitary companies, four Army columns, police officers from four districts and 1 Special Weapons and Tactics team.
The three-day search of the Dera Sacha Sauda headquarters in Sirsa concluded on Sunday evening. Officials conducted the operation amid tight security in the area, Hindustan times reported. Internet, SMS and railway services will resume in Sirsa on Monday, Haryana Public Relations Department Deputy Director Satish Mehra said.
The court commissioner, retired Judge Anil Kumar Singh Pawar, will submit his report to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Mehra said.
The massive search operations included 41 paramilitary companies, four Army columns, police officers from four districts, one Special Weapons and Tactics team, a dog squad and a bomb squad.
On Saturday, the Haryana Police had sealed an illegal explosives factory inside the headquarters, and also discovered a tunnel that connected Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s quarters with where his followers stayed.
On Friday, the first day of searches, teams had found computer hard disk drives, an unregistered Lexus car, an outside broadcasting van, Rs 7,000 in demonetised currency, Rs 12,000 cash and some medicines without labels on the campus of the controversial sect. Five boys, including two minors, were also found at the campus.
Officials also found a skin clinic which was operating without the required licence, the Hindustan Times reported.
The search team is also believed to have found skeletons, a luxury Lexus car, 1,500 pairs of shoes and designer clothes. Plastic money used by the sect’s followers were also found at the site on Friday.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court had ordered the search and appointed retired Judge Anil Kumar Singh Pawar to supervise it, after the police seized a cache of 33 licensed weapons from the premises.
About the campus
The Dera campus, spread over 600 acres, houses a stadium, a hospital, educational institutes, a luxury resort, bungalows and markets. The gufa (cave), where Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh lived, is a 100-acre area, which only the close associates of the Dera were allowed to enter. The woman who complained against Ram Rahim had said she had been called into the “cave” before being assaulted.
On August 28, a Central Bureau of Investigation court sentenced Ram Rahim Singh to 20 years in prison for raping two of his followers in 2002. In the violence that erupted after the verdict, 38 people died and over 250 were injured.