A Punjab Police team arrived here Friday morning to interrogate the sect chief who is accused of hurting religious sentiments of the Sikh community by attiring himself like 10th Sikh guru Gobind Singh earlier this year.

After dilly-dallying for years in one of its most sensitive cases, the CBI has finally chargesheeted the controversial chief of Dera Sacha Sauda, Baba Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh, for allegedly raping two sadhvis (women followers) of his Sirsa-based religious cult and conspiring for the murder of two persons, including a local journalist who tried to expose his ‘misdeeds’ through his articles.

Sikh priests have rejected an apology from a religious sect for adverts showing its leader dressed as a revered guru, which triggered violence in Punjab, a senior cleric said on Wednesday.

A religious sect has apologised for adverts showing its leader dressed as a revered Sikh guru, which triggered violence in India’s Punjab state, reports said on Monday.

The Indian state of Punjab has been set alight by some of the worst rioting in a decade after a newspaper advert placed by the leader of a controversial religious sect sparked outrage in the region’s Sikh community.

Clashes between India’s long-established Sikh community and a religious sect in the northern Indian state of Punjab have left one person dead and dozens others injured.

The Sikh community in Punjab stood up against a religious leader, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, of the Dera Sacha Sauda religious sect. Members of this sect believe that all religions are equal and no religion is superior or inferior.

New Delhi, Sep 4 (PTI) CBI, probing the alleged sexual exploitation of "sadhvis" in a 'dera' (settlement) run by a particular sect near Sirsa in Haryana, has arrested one person and recovered weapons used for killing one of the members of a committee running it.

A three-member CBI team has arrived here to investigate the murder of a local journalist in 2002, blamed on members of a local religious cult.

PTI, Dec. 27, 2002

Frontline (Magazine of The Hindu), Volume 19 - Issue 26, December 21, 2002 - January 03, 2003

Indo-Asian News Service, Nov. 30, 2002

NDTV (India), Nov. 22, 2002

IndiaExpress, Nov. 22, 2002