On April 23, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had allowed Khatta Singh to record his statement afresh in the Ranjit Singh murder case and journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati’s murder case.
CBI counsel HPS Verma said they requested special CBI Judge Jagdeep Singh to issue notice to Khatta Singh to appear before the court and record his statement. Now, the case would come up for hearing on May 5, Verma added.
On September 25 last year, the Special CBI court in Panchkula had dismissed the application filed by Khatta Singh, who had sought permission to depose again in murder cases against the dera head.
While the CBI had favoured Khatta Singh’s plea to depose again in the murder trial against Ram Rahim, the defence had opposed his application on the grounds that his testimony was not reliable.
Thereafter, Khatta Singh had moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
In his appeal, Khatta Singh had submitted that his statement was crucial for deciding the case. He said he had resiled from his earlier statements under threat from Ram Rahim and his men Khatta Singh, a former driver of the dera chief, had told the investigating agency in 2007 how he was privy to a meeting between the dera chief and five of his men before Ranjit Singh was murdered in his village in Kurukshetra district on July 10, 2002.
He had also claimed to have heard Ram Rahim telling his men to eliminate Ram Chander Chhatrapati, editor of a Sirsa-based newspaper, as he had been continuously exposing the dera’s nefarious activities.
However, he had turned hostile during his testimony in the CBI court in February 2012, denying that he had any knowledge about the dera chief’s involvement in these cases.
