Man who invested Rs 3 crore in Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's 'MSG Resort' commits suicide

Rohtak: Shocked and upset at the loss of crores of rupees he had invested in jailed Gurmeet Ram Rahim’s ‘MSG Resort’, a 47-year-old man of Charkhi Dadri district of Haryana killed himself on Friday. The man was also distressed at being insulted for his ties with the ‘Dongi rapist Baba’. This was the first suicide relating to the crackdown on the Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) and the fall of the flamboyant godman. [caption id=“attachment_4025097” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The police said Sombir Kumar of Balkara village in Charki Dadri was associated with controversial Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda for the last seven years. He killed himself by jumping into a well in a farm near his village after going missing on Thursday. Confirming the suicide, Charkhi Dadri (Sadar) Station House Officer Raghuvir Singh told Firstpost that the man was upset over the loss of a massive investment he had made in the DSS project. Sombir, the SHO said, sold off his paternal properties to get money to invest in the doomed project. SHO Singh said Sombir’s son Lalit Kumar said his father had sold more than 32 acres of land he owned in Balkara village to invest Rs 3 crore in MSG Resort. “Sombir had three sons and two daughters. They lived in an apartment in the DSS campus. The sons were security guards in the campus. The girls were in the personal security of Ram Rahim,” said Darshan Kumar, Bhangi Dass of Dera Sacha Sauda in Charki Dadri. “They were given 10 percent profit share in MSG resort.” Lalit Kumar said his father Sombir was a very simple person and was a regular visitor to the Dera for the last seven years. He invested money in MSG Resort after talking with the Dera management and on the insistence of his children. “After investing Rs 3 crore in MSG resort, he spent the rest of what was left of the money in constructing a house in Balkara. He gave loans worth a crore to some villagers,” the son said. Bhangi Dass (top most Dera official in a district) Darshan Kumar said Sombir was elevated to the 45-member management committee of the DSS. “Being part of (the) committee was big honour,” he said. Narrating the events that led to the suicide, Kumar said after the arrest of Ram Rahim, Sombir stopped meeting people because everybody was having a good laugh at him for losing his money to an ‘immoral’ baba. He said the villagers were calling him names and insulting him and Ram Rahim at every corner, even questioning the chastity of his daughters who lived in the DSS campus in Sirsa. “The villagers crossed all limits in portraying my father as immoral and a follower of a rapist,” said the distraught son. Then, he went missing on Thursday afternoon. Lalit Kumar filed a missing person report with the Charkhi Dadri police under 346 section of Indian Penal Code. In the meantime, the villagers and Sombir’s family mounted a search and found Sombir’s body in a well in a farm near the village. The police said they have launched an investigation. (Sat Singh is a Rohtak based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.)