The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to release self-proclaimed Baba Rampal of Haryana, who is serving life imprisonment in murder cases, on parole. A bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde, Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice AS Bopanna dismissed Rampal’s plea after hearing from the video conference. Rampal wanted parole to attend his granddaughter’s wedding on Wednesday.
Rampal and his 13 followers were sentenced to life imprisonment by the court on October 17, 2018, in the murder case registered on November 19, 2014 at Barwala police station in Hisar district, Haryana. All of them were convicted by the court of murder, wrongful confinement and criminal conspiracy.
On November 19, 2014, the body of a woman was found in ashram of Rampal. Rampal was arrested the same day on murder and other charges. Engineer-turned-self-proclaimed Baba Rampal was sentenced to life imprisonment on 16 October 2018 by the court in another case relating to the death of four women and a child on 18 November 2014.
The police arrested Rampal in November 2014. More than 15,000 of his followers surrounded the ashram spread over 12 acres. During this period, five women and one child were killed in the violence. Before becoming Baba, Rampal was a junior engineer in the Haryana government but left the government job in May 1995. Later he established his ashrams at Barwala in Hisar and then Rohtak district. He used to preach in village-to-village and district-district of Haryana.
