Union Home Minister Amit Shah travelled to Punjab on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, and sat down with the families of three men whose deaths have been linked, in different and troubling ways, to the state's drug trade.
The three men — Bikramjit Singh of Gurdaspur district, Gulzar Singh of Sangrur, and anti-drug activist Parminder Singh Jhota of Mansa — died within a span of just a few weeks, and their families' accounts have drawn national attention to the price being paid by ordinary Punjabis who stood up to drug peddlers or were consumed by addiction.
The visit came on Vijayadashami, and Shah opened his remarks by greeting the people on the festival. But the Home Minister made it clear that the day's celebrations were overshadowed, for him, by what he had heard inside the homes of the bereaved families. "I have never felt as deeply pained as I do now," Shah said. "When I met these families... the reality they described was far more harrowing and shocking than anything I had ever read in official reports in Delhi."
It was, he said, a day he would never forget. The statement underlined the gap between the official picture available to policymakers in the national capital and the lived experience of families on the ground in Punjab's villages — a gap that has become politically charged as the three deaths have turned into a wider argument about who is responsible for the state's drug crisis.
The first case Shah took up was that of Bikramjit Singh, a resident of Marhi Pannwan village near Sri Hargobindpur in the Batala area of Gurdaspur district. Bikramjit Singh, aged around 40, was killed with sharp weapons on October 15. According to his family and fellow villagers, he had confronted local drug peddlers shortly before he was attacked. Two other men, Nishan Singh and Gurmukh Singh, were badly injured in the same incident.
The official police account of the Gurdaspur killing differs sharply from the family's version. Police have said that the violence was the result of a disagreement over a mobile phone, not a confrontation with drug traffickers.
The conflicting accounts — a family that says its son died for standing up to drug peddlers, and a police version that describes a far more ordinary quarrel — have added to the anger and uncertainty surrounding the case, and the question of which version reflects the truth remains unresolved.
The second family Shah met was that of Parminder Singh Jhota, an anti-drug activist from Mansa district. Jhota was shot dead on October 13. According to the account of his death, he had confronted the owner of a medical store over the alleged sale of addictive drugs, and he was killed shortly afterwards.
His killing sent a chill through those who had been campaigning against drugs in the district, because it suggested that even well-known activists who challenged the trade were not safe.
The third case was that of Gulzar Singh, a resident of Dirba in Sangrur district, who died by suicide in early September. Before his death, Gulzar Singh had spoken out publicly at a public event about the open sale of drugs in his area and about his own son's addiction to what is described as "chitta". Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema was present at that event.
According to Gulzar Singh's family, they faced harassment and pressure in the period after he spoke out — pressure that, they say, followed them through their grief.
Taken together, the three stories describe a pattern that Shah seized upon in his remarks: ordinary people who spoke up about drugs — a villager who confronted peddlers, an activist who challenged a medical store, a father who publicly named the open sale of drugs — and who then paid with their lives or were driven to despair. It was this pattern, Shah suggested, that had moved him more deeply than anything he had read in official reports.
Shah used the visit to launch a sharp political attack on the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab. He accused the state government of failing to curb the drug trade and of failing to protect the voices that spoke out against drugs. In his telling, the spread of drugs in Punjab could not have happened without political patronage. "Shame on the AAP government in Punjab," he said.
He added that the growing web of drugs in the state and the emboldened drug traffickers had raised serious questions about the functioning of the AAP government. The remarks turned the three deaths into an indictment not only of drug networks but of the state administration's handling of the crisis — a charge that the state government will now have to answer.
The Home Minister also set out a firm deadline. He vowed to eliminate the drug trade in Punjab by December 31, 2029, putting a date on the Centre's commitment to dismantle the networks operating in the state. The vow, made on Vijayadashami before the families of the dead, framed the fight against drugs as a national mission with a fixed endpoint.
The visit came against the backdrop of a significant development in the Jhota case. Hours before Shah reached Punjab, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had announced that the investigation into the murder of Parminder Singh Jhota would be transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation, following demands from the family. The move came after sustained pressure from those who felt the state probe could not be trusted to deliver justice.
Shah pressed the Chief Minister to go further and hand over two more investigations into drug-linked deaths to the CBI as well. According to Shah, the state government "will not be able to handle it."
The exchange over the CBI captured the political tension at the heart of the visit: the state government had itself conceded, at least in the Jhota case, that the family wanted a central probe, while the Centre signalled that it did not believe the state police should be left with the other inquiries either.
For the families, the visit was a rare moment in which their accounts were heard at the highest level of government. For the AAP government in Punjab, it was a day of uncomfortable questions — about the open sale of drugs described by Gulzar Singh, about the killing of a man who challenged a medical store, and about a village killing whose cause remains disputed between the family and the police.
Whether the Home Minister's December 31, 2029 deadline is met will be judged in the years ahead. But on Vijayadashami, in the homes of three bereaved families in Gurdaspur, Sangrur and Mansa, Shah promised that the drug trade in Punjab would be brought to an end — and said that the day, and what he had heard that day, was something he would never forget.
(Reporting based on The Times of India and The Economic Times.)