Twitter freezes Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's account in India

**Twitter** has frozen the official account of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the Dera Sacha Sauda chief who has been convicted in two rape cases and sentenced to 20 years in jail. [caption id=“attachment_3934537” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representative Image. Reuters.[/caption] A search on the microblogging site for Ram Rahim’s accounts returned a message “@Gurmeetramrahim’s account has been withheld in India”. Twitter explains: “In our continuing effort to make our services available to users everywhere if we receive a valid and properly scoped request from an authorised entity, it may be necessary to reactively withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time.” According to Twitter, if twitterati sees a “greyed-out user in a timeline or elsewhere in Twitter”, access to that particular account has been withheld in a particular country, in this case in India. Fifteen years after he raped two of his female disciples, Dera Sacha Sauda chief **Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh** was on Monday sentenced to 20 years in jail for rape and criminal intimidation and fined Rs 30 lakh. The move comes a week after the Dera Sacha Sauda chief was last Friday pronounced guilty by the special CBI judge of raping two women from his Dera for over three to four years. The rapist sect chief was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in each of the two instances of rape. The sentences will run consecutively.