If you needed definitive proof that the Indian justice system operates on a tiered subscription model, look no further than the gates of Sunaria Jail. On January 4, 2026, those gates swung open yet again to release Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on a 40-day parole. This is not an exception; it is a routine. With this latest release, the question is no longer why a convicted rapist and murderer is repeatedly freed, but how openly the system now dares to mock its own laws.
To understand the gravity of this mockery, one must strip away the “Rockstar Baba” persona and remember the convict. Ram Rahim is not a misunderstood godman or a political prisoner. He is a predator convicted in 2017 for sexually exploiting two female disciples in his secret gufa. He is serving a life sentence for the assassination of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati, who paid with his life for exposing these crimes. In any functioning democracy, such convictions would end a man’s public influence. In India, they seem to enhance it.
The pattern of his releases is so precise it would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. We saw him released days before the Punjab Assembly Elections in 2022, right before the Haryana Municipal Elections later that year, and again ahead of polls in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. Now, he is out again. Ram Rahim does not get parole for good behavior; he gets it for good polling numbers. While officially “away from prison,” he holds online satsangs, effectively campaigning from his “house arrest” and signaling to his blind followers which way the wind—and their votes—should blow.
This is not administrative discretion; it is institutional surrender. The state trades the dignity of justice for the assurance of bulk votes. What Ram Rahim offers political power is not spirituality, but scale. In return, the system offers him periodic freedom and relevance. It is a transactional alliance between faith merchants and political managers.
He has successfully monetized the spiritual hunger of the poor to build an empire, and now uses that empire to ransom the rule of law itself. While his victims live with lifelong trauma, the convict walks free on schedule, eating the cake of freedom while serving the sentence of a murderer. Until this cycle stops, justice in India remains an auction where the gavel only falls for those who cannot afford the price of admission.
