Tribune News Service
Ajmer Singh Saabi’s relatives mourn his death in Ballan village of Jalandhar on Thursday.
— Tribune photo by S.S. Chopra |
Ballan (Jalandhar), March 29
Ajmer Singh Saabi (23), an NRI, has allegedly been shot dead in California of the USA.
Some unknown persons killed him when he was parking his truck on Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning, IST.
He was living with his parents and sister in California for about a decade.
A pall of gloom descended in Saabi’s native village Ballan on the Jalandhar-Pathankot road after the news of his murder spread.
Saabi’s father Avtar Singh Hothi informed from the USA on the phone about the incident to his Jalandhar- based sister Surinder Kaur on Wednesday.
Hothi’s relatives gathered at the village on Thursday to express their
condolences.
Hothi’s relatives suspect the hand of the father of Saabi’s former lover behind the murder.
Saabi’s uncle (phuphar) Surinder Singh, posted as a head constable in the Jalandhar police, told The Tribune that the father of Saabi’s former lover Ajit Singh Pannu, a transporter in the USA, had come to the village along with his daughter and his two relatives in January this year. Saabi and his other family members, including his father, were in the village that time to attend a relative’s marriage.
Hothi’s relative Sohan Singh, principal of SD Public School, Adampur, said Pannu had contacted the village panchayat for arranging a meeting of his daughter with Saabi.
Panchayat member Sandeep Virdi confirmed that Pannu had come to his house on January 21. Subsequently, he had called Avtar Singh Hothi.
Another relative, Balbir Singh, and his friend Amrik Singh said Hothi had told Pannu that they were ready to marry their son to his daughter a year before but at that time he had refused. So, he was married to Jasbir Kaur of Muradpur Narial village on the Tanda-Hoshiarpur road in Hoshiarpur district about a year ago.
Virdi said that Pannu requested Hothi to arrange a meeting of Saabi with his daughter and let him say the same thing to his daughter, so that she might forget him.
The panchayat member said that Hothi had agreed to arrange Saabi’s meeting with Pannu’s daughter, but it could not happen.
