Teen’s body found in Turkey, Amritsar family tense

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 8

The parents of a city lad, Lovepreet Singh, 19, are on tenterhooks ever since they came to know about the Turkey Government’s claim of having found a body with their son’s Aadhaar card.

His father Swarn Singh, a tailor by profession, said:“The Turkish authorities claim that the body was fished out of the sea on June 26 and it had remained in water for at least 10 days. This is not possible as we had a chat with Lovepreet on Whatsapp on June 18,” he said.

The boy’s mother Inderjit Kaur said the ‘kara’ (iron bracelet worn by Sikhs) despatched by the Turkish authorities was not her son’s.

Lovepreet’s parents, along with their family friend Shaminder Singh and his wife Navdeep Kaur, have applied for visa to travel to Istanbul to see the body.

Shaminder said Lovepreet was sent to Girne American University in Lithuania. The travel agent had sent him to Turkey on transit visa for some three months. It was intriguing how Lovepreet came to stay there for a longer period, he added.

The 19-year-old had flown to Istanbul on September 21 last year. His parents claimed to have taken Rs 8-lakh loan to send their son abroad and a sum of Rs 5.50 lakh was paid to the travel agent.