Images that mirrored highs and lows, joy & despair

It was a happening year for Jalandhar that saw popular sentiments surging on the streets, the anguish of the peasantry, rise in crime incidents but also held out hope of of turning over a new leaf in the New Year

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TOP STORIES OF THE YEAR

PROLONGED UNREST: Two weeks of unrest prevailed in October post the incidents of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib and killing of two youths in Faridkot as Sikh protestors kept blocking all roads. A stone pelting incident between shopkeepers and Sikh activists at Mai Hiran Gate market turned things all the more ugly. In an aftermath of the incident, angry youths took on Akali leaders at State Gurdwara Kapurthala. In Adampur too, SGPC member Paramjit Singh Raipur was roughed up. 

HIGHWAY KILLING: Gangster Sukha Kahlwan was gunned down on January 22 near Phagwara on National Highway 1 while he was being taken back to Nabha jail by the police after his appearance in a court in Jalandhar.  

HUGE BLOT ON KHAKI: An Education Service Provider, Rajni, who was expecting a child, was illegally detained by the police ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Punjab in April this year. She suffered a miscarriage soon after.

KIDNEY RACKET: A doctor couple, doing private practice, got embroiled in a kidney transplant racket. The couple has been evading arrest and is absconding for nearly three months.

BIDDING ADIEU

SP Baljit Singh of Kapurthala got martyred on July 28 while fighting the terrorists who had got holed up in Dinanagar police station. His son was later given a DSP’s job

Five-time MLA and a former Congress minister Chaudhary Jagjit Singh passed away following a heart attack on August 4

Steel tycoon Lord Swraj Paul’s son Angad Paul (45) died in London owing to a fall from his penthouse in. Angad had visited Jalandhar with his family a few months before the unfortunate incident

A prominent local industrialist JK Beri (70), owner of Leader Valves, passed away after a month-long illness at the CMC Hospital in Ludhiana

STATUS QUO, NO HEADWAY

DEEP FREEZER: A decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court on performing of last rites of Dera Divya Jyoti Jagrati Sansthan Nurmahal’s ‘clinically dead’ chief Ashutosh remains pending.

UNENDING DILEMMA: The dilemma continues for the families, whose kin had been reportedly held hostage by the ISIS in Iraq, over their status as to whether they are dead or alive since the past one and a half years.

DRUG CASE: There could be no further summons by the ED into the Bhola drug case since the transfer of Assistant Director Niranjan Singh in January this year. The transfer orders, however, got recently revoked.

YANNICK MURDER: The attempt to murder case could not get converted into a murder case even after LPU’s African student Yannick died as the police claims not to have received his death certificate. One of the accused Romy Uppal, who fled to Australia during his parole, too remains untraceable.

NO INCUMBENT FOR IKG-PTU VC POST: The issue of appointment of Vice Chancellor and Registrar to IK Gujral Punjab Technical University remained pending owing to a deadlock between Technical Education Minister Madan Mohan Mittal and Chief Secretary Punjab Sarvesh Kaushal over the process of selection of candidate. 

NON-STARTER: City Bus service which was withheld in September 2014 remained a non-starter this year too. 

FOREIGN VIBES

SOME GOOD VIBES

US Ambassador to India Richard Verma, who hails from Jalandhar, made two visits to his native place

Two Jalandhar natives, Ramesh Sangha and Navdeep Bains, made it to the Canadian Parliament

...SOME BAD TOO

UK hotelier Ranjit Singh Power was allegedly murdered by his UK friend in Jalandhar. His body was found dumped in a river near Haryana

CELEBRITY MARRIAGES       

Marriage of cricketer Harbhajan Singh with actress Geeta Basra

Two Olympians, hockey player Chandi and athlete Manjeet Kaur too tied the knot

GO GREEN INITIATIVES

Environmentalist Balbir Singh Seechewal continued to engage his volunteers for more drives, including cleanliness of the Sultanpur Lodhi railway station. He was also invited for a high tea with President Pranab Mukherjee on September 10. Union Minister of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharti took a round of the free-flowing Bein with him on a boat during her visit in August and said that it was the best example of public participation for a cleanliness drive. 

Environment crusader from Nakodar Gaurav Jain too kept on working for the cause of waste management through his complaints against the civic bodies with the National Green Tribunal.

Faux pas

Vice Chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University Dr BS Dhillon said at a kisan mela in Jalandhar, “Destruction of crop by whitefly is the result of mismanagement on the part of the cotton growers. Only farmers are responsible for their losses and you cannot blame the government every time.” The statement had a far-reaching repercussion for the farmers already in big distress with protests that ensued thereafter.

A staunch devout of self-styled God woman Radhe Maa alias Sukhvinder Kaur, Union MoS Vijay Sampla, backed her strongly as her controversy was on and blamed the media for going out against her, “The questions being raised over her obscenity after circulation of her pictures in short dresses are highly condemnable. She has every right to wear whatever she wants to in her personal arena.” 

A city-based youth was shot dead in Philippines while his father was brutally injured.

POLITY-WISE

The region remained politically active with several Union Ministers, Venkaiah Naidu, Smriti Irani, JP Nadda, Maneka Gandhi, Suresh Prabhu, Thawar Chand Gehlot and Uma Bharti, paying a visit here 

Union Minister of State Vijay Sampla, who hails from Jalandhar, got mired in controversy as notorious gangster Surjit Singh Bitti, who was arrested for allegedly shooting at his rival, alleged while coming out of court that his kin Robin Sampla was behind his arrest. The Union MoS personally visited the Police Commissioner's camp office to make his point 

CPS and Adampur MLA Pawan Tinu faced a lot of protests in his constituency, especially after three Karwal brothers won the Municipal Committee elections from Adampur as SAD rebels

AGRARIAN CRISIS

Sugarcane farmers held a massive protest in the Jalandhar-Phagwara road near Dakoha, paralysing road and rail traffic for over seven hours on Sept 3. Rail traffic remained suspended for five days from Oct 8 

The potato farmers of the region too vented out their ire by giving away nearly 400 quintals of the crop laden in four trolley for free to the passersby at Namdev Chowk on August 7. They said they were getting barely Rs 2 per kg in the wholesale market, owing to no government aid to market their produce to other states or neighbouring countries.

CAREER-WISE

New private university was set up this year: Baba Bhag Singh University at Padhiana near Adampur

5 IKG-PTU’s Board of Governors got reconstituted with six bureaucrats placed in it

MC LAXITY

On March 20: A student of MGN Public School was injured when his scooter skidded on a potholed road in Ravinder Nagar. The victim, Rajvir Singh, had to be admitted to a hospital with injuries in his right eye, face, jaw and shoulder.

On March 28: Tarsem Lal (52), a retired teacher, got badly injured when his scooter skidded on a potholed road at the Mahavir Marg

On October 31: A four-year-old child Aneesh died after falling in an open manhole in front of his house at Golden Avenue near Maqsudan

MAJOR FIRE

Two sons of a daily wager, aged three and four years, died in a fire incident. The couple had gone for their work, locking both of them at home, when the fire erupted.

Two rubber factories got gutted in a huge fire on Divali at Aman Nagar. 

A major fire gutted around 30 hutments (jhuggis) on the Nandanpur road near the Heerapur level crossing

SET FREE

Apprehended by the Jalandhar rural police in 2012 on the charge of plotting terrorist activities in the state, former SGPC member Kulbir Singh Barapind was acquitted by the local District and Sessions Court. 

Crime galore

UNSOLVED ATM LOOTS: Several ATM loot cases reported in the region. In many cases, either the gas cutters were used or ATM machines were uprooted but most of these incidents are lying unsolved. The role of a woman too surfaced in one of the incidents captured on the CCTV

TERRORIST ARREST: Jalandhar rural police brought terrorist Jagtar Singh Tara from Thailand

GANGSTER’S ARREST: City police arrested a dreaded gangster Daljit Singh Bhana after 11 years

JAIL CONTROVERSY: The DSP of the Modern Jail, Kapurthala, Vikramjit Panthe, was shot at while on way back to the compound after a tour with his wife to Jalandhar. He later levelled charges against the SP (Jail)

POLICE  ENCOUNTER: The Jalandhar police carried out an encounter to arrest three gangsters connected with DSP Panthe case at Sant Nagar on the night of July 5. ASI Jagdev Singh suffered bullet injuries in the two-hour cross-firing that rattled the residents

ODD INCIDENTS

ACCIDENTAL FIRE: On July 24, as a villager from Lohian had come for renewal of his arms licence, a rifle went off accidentally while it was being checked by a guard at the entrance of Suwidha Centre. A teenage girl Neetu sustained injuries in her back and leg. 

BALLOON BURST INJURES SIX: Six persons were injured in a blast in a helium balloon at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Phagwara on March 24 as the campus was being decked up a day ahead of the annual cultural festival "One India". 

COP’S CARBINE SNATCHED: Challenging the Punjab Police, a drug addict snatched a carbine from a cop at Saral Mundi village in Goraya when the latter was trying to catch hold of him. The addict along with his uncle was consuming drugs on the premises of the government school in the village when two police officers spotted them. One of their aides, Kuldeep Singh, who was hiding near the school, videographed the entire episode and even circulated the video clip to mock at the police.

MAJOR CONVICTION

Four including Prince Makkar, nephew of former SAD MLA Sarabjit Makkar, got rigorous life imprisonment for murdering a hotelier friend Gikki Sekhon. Conviction under culpable homicide case was pronounced by a Gurdaspur Court as the case had been shifted there.

PROMISING CAREERS CUT SHORT

Fickle finger of fate snuffed life out of 25-year-old MBA passout Avitejinder Singh Kler, a resident of Model Town, on June 13 in the ammonia gas leak episode at Doraha near Ludhiana. He had gone there to have a McDonald’s burger from 

A law student Apoorva Juneja died while travelling in a Kartar bus owned by former Congress minister Avtar Henry on the Jalandhar-Hoshiarpur road on September 19

The promising career of a 23-year-old Jalandhar-based youth, Jagtaranjeet Singh, was cut short after he reportedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his college hostel in the Academy of Maritime Education and Training (AMET) University in Chennai

Leaving a mark

GOOD NEWS

JUSTICE FINALLY COMES CALLING: Nearly three years after armed drug smugglers had gunned down the brave cop ASI Gurdev Singh, who was patrolling around Haveli, justice finally came for his son, who got the job of an SI 

APPOINTMENTS FOR PASSPORT VERIFICATION: Passport applicants don't need to make rounds of police stations to inquire about the stage of verification since a service launched in April. They have a facility to take an appointment, after which a police official pays a visit to the applicant's home as per the latter's convenience. Eighteen teams with bikes have been put on the job 

AIRPORT BUS RESUMES: Following the protests against the state government over the issue of monopoly to Indo- Canadian bus service owned by the Badals post the death of a girl after a fall from Orbit bus in Moga, the Punjab Roadways resumed its Delhi airport bus service

BAD NEWS

BLOT ON GOVT: A Kapurthala’s old-aged pensioner committed suicide in front of the bank for not getting a paltry Rs 250 monthly pension 

A SHAMEFUL ACT: Eve teasers brutally injured father of a girl while he was saving her from them outside the education institution

DEATH ON TRACKS: Three persons were killed as a tractor-trailer hit the DMU train on a foggy morning. The tractor driver, who died, was the only breadwinner for his family, comprising of eight children