The very day disgraced Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim, alias Harpal Singh, was convicted by a CBI special court in Panchkula, he moved an application before the same judge seeking the company of his so-called adopted daughter Honeypreet Insan, alias Priyanka Taneja, in jail.
Rape convict Gurmeet, who took Honeypreet along in a plush helicopter which flew him from Sirsa to the Rohtak prison, pleaded that his adopted daughter was required to be in prison with him since she was the only one who could take care of his backache and migraine.
The plea was unusual, especially when allegations flew thick and fast of an amorous relationship between Gurmeet and Honeypreet, who was previously married to another Dera Sacha Sauda devotee Vishwas Gupta.
Honeypreet Singh the ‘Special Caretaker’ of Ram Rahim Singh
So, when Honeypreet boarded the chopper, lugging the rape-convicted babaji’s luggage, and sat opposite him, it raised many eyebrows.
It also led to tongue-wagging as former Dera Sacha Sauda devotees who have fallen foul of Gurmeet made unrestrained claims of a “sexual” relationship between the baba and his adopted daughter.
Indeed, Gupta, who is now in his 30s, had a few years ago came out in the open to level serious charges of adultery against his former spiritual guru.
Although the Panchkula judge had refused to entertain Gurmeet’s petition seeking Honeypreet’s company in jail, saying that only the state government or the Sunariya prison authorities could take a decision on the plea, the police team in Rohtak let Gurmeet and Honeypreet be alone in a slick room in a guest house-turned-temporary prison for two-and-a-half-hours.
No Haryana police officer is willing to hazard a guess on what may have happened in the room before Gurmeet entered the Sunariya prison complex, but some of them acknowledged that he did make a last-ditch attempt to have Honeypreet live with him in his place of incarceration.
Several Haryana and Punjab journalists familiar with the goings-on in Dera Sacha Sauda and the sordid stories of “sexual exploitation” at the sprawling ashram in Sirsa doubled up in laughter, claiming that Gurmeet’s “insistence on having Honeypreet living with him in prison was because she took special care of him”.
Vishwas Gupta: Former Husband’s Allegations Against Baba
The strange relationship between Gurmeet and Honeypreet is brought into sharp relief from an unabashed February 7 tweet in which she described him thus; “You are lovelier than the red rose”.
Honeypreet’s former husband Vishwas Gupta could not be contacted. Since his “divorce” with Honeypreet, Vishwas and his father Mahendra Pal Gupta have frequently changed their mobile phone numbers.
In 2011, Vishwas made the stunning claim that Gurmeet had a “sexual relationship” with Honeypreet and that on one occasion he had seen his wife straddling the babaji’s lap in a well-appointed room in his ashram gufa or den.
Honeypreet’s father Ramdev Taneja owns an MRF tyre showroom in Sirsa.
Court documents in the possession of The Quint reveal that Vishwas and Honeypreet (whose real, worldly name is Priyanka) were married on 2 February 1999 “at a satsang held in the Dera” in Gurmeet’s presence.
Gurmeet, it was alleged by Vishwas’s father, “engineered the marriage to continue his illicit relations with (Honeypreet)…or to develop such relations with them…”. However, after the said adoption (of Honeypreet), she “was not allowed to live with her husband even for a single day. She stayed at the Dera all the time.”
After alleging “illicit relationship and adultery” between Gurmeet Ram Rahim and Honeypreet, Vishwas’s family moved out of the Dera complex and took up residence in Panchkula.
Honeypreet, Mahendra Pal alleged, was “enticed by his (Gurmeet’s) power, popularity and financial wealth”.
Honeypreet Filed an Array of Cases Against the Guptas
When the Guptas tried to “bring back” Honeypreet, she responded by filing an FIR (on 13 October 2011) under Sections 498A, 406, 506, 504, 367, 323 and 34 of the IPC against them.
Meanwhile, Gurmeet’s henchmen “stalked” Vishwas and his father. Several other cases were lodged against Vishwas who was arrested in a case (17 January 2013) under Section 406 and 420 of the IPC. Gurmeet was “held responsible for these FIRs”.
Although the Guptas apprehended a threat to their lives, the pressure exerted by Gurmeet Ram Rahim allegedly mounted, as he forced them to acknowledge before a satsang at the Sirsa ashram that their charges of illicit relations between him and Honeypreet were “motivated” and at the behest of a rival sect.
When the trail of cases of Gurmeet’s alleged deviant behaviour was tracked by the CBI, it was found that he had had “sexual relations” with at least 18 of 24 women devotees at the Dera Sacha Sauda. This was reportedly confirmed during the CBI’s examination of and polygraph test on Dera managers Indrasen and Krishan Lal.
Four Ashram Women Testify to Sexual Activities at DSS
The statements of four former women devotees from Kurukshetra and Fatehabad and that of murdered Dera follower Ranjit Singh’s brother-in-law brought to fore details of “gratuitous” sexual activities in the Sirsa ashram.
Two former women followers who were christened Nazm and Tasleem (both sisters) by Gurmeet said in their statements to the CBI on 4 May 2006 that they were subjected to sexual acts. The statement of one of the two Kurukshetra-based former female devotees to the CBI was recorded on 27 July 2006.
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