Upinder Kaur, the wife of Gagandeep Singh Randhawa, a district manager with the Punjab Warehousing Corporation (PWC), has said that his postmortem and last rites will not be carried out “until justice is delivered.” Grieving family members of Punjab State Warehousing Corporation (PSWC) district manager, Gagandeep Singh Randhawa in, Amritsar on Saturday. (Sameer Sehgal/HT photo)
Talking to reporters on Sunday, Kaur said, “Postmortem and last rites will be conducted only after that... I want justice and nothing else,” reported news agency ANI.
Randhawa allegedly died after consuming a poisonous substance at around 7 am on Saturday. His death by suicide has triggered a political storm in Punjab, with serious allegations emerging against former transport minister Laljit Singh Bhullar.
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A video that surfaced on social media the same day purportedly shows him claiming he had taken the extreme step out of fear of Bhullar.
Allegations of harassment The widow of the PWC official accused Bhullar of repeatedly harassing her husband and pushing him to the brink.
“Transport minister Laljit Singh Bhullar tortured my husband a lot. My husband was made so helpless that he took his own life... He was told that his family, his children, would be finished off, and gangsters would be put after him,” ANI quoted her as saying.
Describing the days leading up to his death, she added, “He was tortured a lot on March 13 at his office. On Saturday morning, yesterday, he took his own life. I have 3 young children. I have a mother-in-law. All of us demand justice. Make arrests.”
‘I fear for my life,’ says wife Kaur said her husband had informed her about the alleged harassment and had even approached authorities.
“After he came back on March 13, he had told me everything... He had even made a complaint to his department. They only kept giving him assurances, but nothing happened," she said.
She further alleged delays in police action, claiming, “FIR was not registered initially under the government's pressure.”
Linking the issue to an official tender, she said, “This was all done because a tender was not passed. It was being implied that my husband was not passing it deliberately.”
“I fear for my life; security should be provided to my children and me... If anything happens to us, this Govt would be responsible for it,” Kaur added.
Minister resigns, FIR filed The controversy escalated quickly, leading to Bhullar’s resignation from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann accepted his resignation following the allegations.
Soon after the resignation, a case was registered against the former minister, his father Sukhdev Singh Bhullar, and another aide on charges of abetment of suicide.
Gurpreet Singh Bhullar, Commissioner of Police, Amritsar, confirmed that an FIR has been filed under Sections 109, 351(3) and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at the Ranjit Avenue police station.