Chandigarh (PTI): Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is serving a prison sentence in Haryana's Sunaria jail, has been granted parole for 40 days, official sources said on Friday.

The move comes just ahead of the Adampur bypoll, which is scheduled to be held on November 3. The Dera chief had earlier come out of prison on a month-long parole in June. Prior to that, he was granted three weeks' furlough in February.

The sect chief is serving a 20-year jail term for raping two women disciples at his ashram in Sirsa, where the Dera is headquartered. He was convicted by a special CBI court in Panchkula in August 2017.

He was last year also convicted along with four others for hatching a conspiracy to kill Ranjit Singh, a Dera manager, in 2002. The Dera chief and three others were convicted in 2019 for the murder of a journalist more than 16 years ago.

 

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Bengaluru: The Karnataka Government has sought clarification from the Central drugs standard control organisation following reports linking the serial deaths of pregnant women at Ballari District Hospital to unsafe IV Ringer's Lactate solution. Health Department Principal Secretary Harsha Gupta has written a letter to the Drugs Controller General of India, Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi.

Recent Investigations revealed bacterial and fungal contaminants in the IV solution given to the women. Out of 192 batches supplied by a West Bengal-based pharmaceutical company, 22 were found substandard by the state drug control department, leading to the suspension of the medicine's use.

However, these batches had passed quality tests at the Central Drug Lab, creating a regulatory conflict.

The Health Department emphasized adherence to tender rules, stating that the Central Drug Lab's approval is legally binding. Samples from the problematic batches have been sent for re-testing at the central lab in West Bengal, with results expected on December 9.

As a precautionary measure, the state has blacklisted the implicated batches and issued directives to halt their use in all hospitals.