New Delhi: A ‘social activist’ known for exposing the sale of contraband as well as addictive drugs by chemists in Punjab, Parminder Singh alias ‘Jhota’, was shot dead in Mansa Tuesday. According to preliminary details collated by Punjab Police, he was gunned down by a district-based chemist.
A video purportedly showing the killing and sequence of events preceding the offence is being circulated on social media. The deceased was apparently recording his confrontation with the chemist when he was shot.
Mansa Senior Superintendent of Police Vaibhav Choudhary said that ‘Jhota’ was shot from close range at the shop of the accused, who has been identified. “The accused is a local chemist shop owner and fired upon the deceased,” he told ThePrint. “He has been identified, and teams are already in action to arrest the accused at the earliest.”
Sources in Punjab Police said that the kind of weapon and motive behind the killing was uncertain, but they raised suspicion that it may have happened during Jotha’s “raids” at the particular pharmacy shop in the district.
ThePrint had reported in 2023 that Parminder had shot to prominence after making a series of videos on chemists supplying “banned drugs” such as Pregabalin to youth in the state. He was arrested over an altercation with a chemist shop owner in Mansa in 2023.
A former boxer and reformed addict himself, Jhota was running Facebook pages and social media campaigns against pharmacy stores in Mansa and the Malwa region of the state.
Even in the last video posted on his Facebook profile, Jhota raised concerns about the rampant sale of intoxicating pills in the Mansa district, citing the example of the district-based women affected adversely by the contraband. He had further flagged several hotspots in the region, urging the district police to act by conducting raids at those locations.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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