Mansa: Fourteen days after the killing of anti-drug activist Parminder Singh Jhotta, his family and the action committee have yet to agree to his postmortem and cremation. They remain firm on their demand for the resignation of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav, saying neither procedure will take place until both demands are met.
The action committee has scheduled a meeting with Jhotta’s family on Monday morning to decide the next phase of the protest. No meeting has been confirmed with the committee formed by the state government, although the demand to grant Jhotta martyr status is expected to be raised if talks take place.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has already announced that Jhotta will be recognised as a martyr of the Sikh community. It has also decided to display his photograph at the Central Sikh Museum in Amritsar. The administration, meanwhile, claims that 11 of the action committee’s 14 demands have been accepted.
In a related development, wholesale and retail chemists across Punjab have announced that they will stop selling three categories of medicines: tramadol, pregabalin, and all psychotropic and narcotic drugs.
Jhotta’s wife, Manpreet Kaur, said the struggle should go beyond securing punishment for those responsible for her husband’s death and become a collective fight against the growing drug problem in Punjab.
She said she did not want other families to endure the grief her family had suffered, adding that no child should lose a father and no family’s dreams should be destroyed by drugs. She called for people to unite and hold the government accountable for the deaths of young people and the destruction of families.
Manpreet appealed to farmers, labourers, young people and social organisations to come together on a common platform. Continuing the fight against drugs that Jhotta had begun and preventing other families from being devastated, she said, would be the true tribute to him.
