Dera Sacha Sauda of controversial Gorman Gurmeet Singh Ram Raheem had planned to set up an ashram in Nalgonda district of Telangana, about 100 kms from Hyderabad.
Gurmeet Singh, who has hit the headlines after a court convicted him of rape and whose hundreds of thousands of followers went on rampage in Haryana, Punjab and Delhi, had purchase 59 acres of land at Veliminedu village under Chityala Mandal in Nalgonda. District over a period of seven years from 2008.
A compound wall was also built around the property and the plans were being drawn to build an Ashram, a hotel, a college and an old age home.
The plans were in the pipeline for quite some time. However, their was resistance from the local people following the allegations that the land purchased include assigned land allotted to the poor which cannot be sold to any other person.
Following the growing pressure from the villagers to demolish the compound wall and recover the assigned land the revenue department authorities took up the enquiry and found the irregularities.
Manda Revenue officer Ch Vijayalakshmi said, “our inquiry has shown that part of the land was encroached upon by the Trust”, adding that the government will initiate the steps to recover the land”.
The entire land was registered in the name of one Shyam lal, DSS representative of DSS in Hyderabad and four other individuals Puroshottam lal, Satbeer, Chandrakant and Chandrababu.
Villagers say Gurmeet Singh had invited the Sarpanch (elected head) of the village to Sirsa in Haryana two years back and donated Rs 100000 to the village for the construction of a temple, a cycle stand in government school and installing a statue of Swami Vivekananda. He had also discussed the plans of setting up Ashram in the village, a few kms off the busy Hyderabad-Vijayawada high way.
However the latest turn of events has put a question mark over the plans and majority of villagers have a sigh of relief that such a controversial Ashram did not materialise. But there were also people in the village who regret that the village did not get the projects promised by Gurmeet Singh.