Chandigarh: The Amritsar district manager of the Punjab State Warehousing Corporation (PSWC), who died by suicide in the wee hours Saturday, was allegedly “manhandled” and “abused” by cabinet minister Laljit Singh Bhullar at his office on 13 March.
Bhullar manhandled him in the presence of the minister’s father Sukhdev Singh at the office in Patti, according to the letters purportedly written by Gagandeep Singh Randhawa, the PSWC district manager, to the Tarn Taran Deputy Commissioner and the PSWC managing director. Randhawa further alleged that the minister beat him up and forced him to record a confession statement of which the minister made a video.
The minister resigned from the Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Cabinet on Saturday itself. The aggrieved family, meanwhile, has decided not to cremate Randhawa’s body till an FIR is registered against Bhullar and his father.
The above-mentioned letters were released by Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia on X Saturday.
👉 These are the letters written by DM Dr. Gagandeep Singh Randhawa.
👉 The letters contain detailed accounts of the misbehavior, threats and intimidation he faced on 13 March, 2026.
👉 First letter dated 14 March 2026 was written to MD Warehouse Gautam Jain
Result: zero
— Bikram Singh Majithia (@bsmajithia) March 21, 2026
Randhawa, in the hand-written letters, alleged that he was being pressured by the minister to grant a tender for the construction of a warehouse for storing grain to Sukhdev Singh.
He, however, was resisting the pressure on the ground that it was the Food Corporation of India (FCI) that had to grant the tender and he had no role to play in the matter. The minister allegedly was upset that the tender was awarded to another firm and that he blamed Randhawa for having taken Rs 10 lakh in order to help that firm get the tender.
Majithia shared the tender application of Bhullar’s father on social media.
👉 This is proof that Minister @Laljitbhullar wanted to secure tenders in the name of his father, Sukhdev Singh Bhullar.
👉 This is just one proof; Laljit Bhullar has taken several such tenders and intended to take many more.
👉 Due to this, Dr. Gagandeep Singh Randhawa was… pic.twitter.com/IelPmsJOiK
— Bikram Singh Majithia (@bsmajithia) March 21, 2026
The four letters shared by Majithia on X are worded similarly. Two letters addressed to Gautam Jain, MD of the PSWC, are dated 14 March. The same day he wrote about the incident to Vinay Sharma of Foodgrains Field Employees Union. On 16 March, he wrote about the incident to the Tarn Taran Deputy Commissioner.
When contacted, Tarn Taran Deputy Commissioner Rahul told ThePrint that he had not received any written complaint from Randhawa but he had come to know about the incident from another officer on 16 March.
“Last Monday, I came to know about an incident involving Randhawa and the minister. On 17 March, I called Randhawa to my residence and asked him about what had happened. Since he was disturbed, I counselled him for over an hour. I offered him if he wanted any security or if he wanted to be transferred out of the district. I even asked him if he wanted to give a written complaint to which he said if required, he would get back to me. I had informed my seniors about the meeting,” the DC said.
Since that conversation is now a matter of investigation, he said, it would not be appropriate to divulge the details. He, however, said that Randhawa was transferred two days ago from Amritsar to Chandigarh.
ThePrint tried to reach out to Gautam Jain, Laljit Singh Bhullar and Sukhdev Bhullar through messages and phone calls. This article will be updated as and when a response is received.
In a post on his Facebook page, Bhullar wrote that all allegations against him were baseless. He added that he had offered to resign so that the allegations against him can be proved without any bias or pressure.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said he had asked Bhullar to resign after his name surfaced in Randhawa’s suicide.
Randhawa named Bhullar, the transport and jails minister, in a video he allegedly made after consuming a poisonous fertiliser Friday night. He was rushed to the hospital following the incident but died in the hospital.
In an interview to the media, Randhawa’s friend Gurpal Singh said that he rushed Randhawa to the hospital in the wee hours Saturday morning. “He was talking and constantly saying that Bhullar is not going to leave him and his children and nobody can save him now,” Gurpal said.
He added that Randhawa was disturbed since the incident at Bhullar’s house last week after which he had gone and reported the matter to several officers.
But when no action was taken he was left with no choice but to take this step, Gurpal said. “We had been giving him a lot of moral support but we never knew that he would actually do something like this.”
Randhawa had gone all alone to Bhullar’s house where he, along with his father, abused and threatened him, he said, adding that Randhawa told them that he was forced to record a confession on camera at gunpoint.
Addressing a press conference in Chandigarh, the chief minister said that the chief secretary was asked to probe the allegations against Bhullar.
“The minister has been asked to resign so that he cannot influence the investigation against him in any manner. We will not tolerate any such behaviour which might have happened that led to an employee taking his own life. This is not the reason why we entered politics,” Mann said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)