Grenade attacks, hit-and-run cases on the rise in city
Year ender: Fauja Singh case, Ambedkar statue vandalism and rising crime shock city
Grenade attacks, encounters, snatchings, drug seizures, jewellery heists, extortion calls, and sexual assaults against women and minors shook Jalandhar in 2025.
The city also mourned the deaths of marathon legend Fauja Singh, killed by a reckless driver, and Richi Kaypee, son of leader Mohinder Singh Kaypee, who died in a separate speeding vehicle incident. Despite mounting criticism from the opposition over the law and order situation, police continued investigating the high-profile cases that rocked the city and its outskirts.
The new year begins with hopes that the gruesome crimes of 2025 will serve as a lesson to prevent a repeat of past mistakes. In April, an unidentified attacker lobbed a grenade at the residence of former Punjab minister and BJP national executive member Manoranjan Kalia around 1 am, causing the side door near the entrance to collapse and damaging his vehicle. The assailant reportedly arrived on an e-rickshaw to carry out the attack. By mid-April, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had taken over the case from Jalandhar police. Four individuals, including Khalistani operatives, were charged in connection with the attack, among them the main executor Saidul Ami, auto-rickshaw driver Satish Kumar Kaka, and his cousin Harry.
Barely a month before the incident at Kalia’s house, a grenade had also been hurled at YouTuber Rozer Sandhu’s residence on March 16, 2025 at the Raipur Rasoolpur village in Jalandhar. Pak Gangster Shehzad Bhatti claimed responsibility for the attack soon after and within a couple of days the Jalandhar Rural Police apprehended Hardik Kamboj, the prime accused in the grenade attack from Yamunanagar, who also made an attempt to flee, resulting in an injury, was apprehended again.
On March 31st, glass around the statue of Dr B R Ambedkar was found vandalised in Nangal village in Jalandhar’s Phillaur during the wee hours. Secessionist group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) claimed responsibility for the incident. The police arrested two persons for the defacement—identified as Sukhbir Singh, alias Rajan (32), and Avtar Singh, alias Tari, both hailing from Noorpur Chattha village in Nakodar. The vandalism and angst from Phillaur residents and Ambedkarite groups following this, kept police on tenterhooks as the district police also stepped up surveillance of 56 statues of Dr BR Ambedkar in Phillaur and its periphery. Nangal village where the incident happened got a brand new statue of Ambedkar made from Lucknow, in response to the incident. On June 2, 2025, another Ambedkar statue was defaced in Phillaur—with a miscreant defacing it with black paint.
Sikh legend and the world’s oldest marathoner, Fauja Singh, also known as the “Turbaned Tornado,” died in a hit-and-run incident while on an afternoon walk in his ancestral village in Jalandhar on July 14. His death prompted worldwide mourning and tributes from those whose lives he had touched. Singh was run over by a speeding Toyota Fortuner driven by Amritpal Singh Dhillon, an NRI, who was arrested the following day. Exactly, two months later, on September 13, two-time MP and Shiromani Akali Dal leader Mohinder Singh Kaypee’s son Richi Kaypee died in a tragic accident when a speeding car hit his vehicle. Footage showed a speeding white Creta car hit several vehicles at Mata Rani Chowk—one of these being Richi’s Fortuner. Gursharan Prince, the accused in the incident was arrested on September 30.
Long drawn case involving FIRs and suspension of (then) Phillaur SHO Bhushan Kumar, following a viral video of him engaging in an indecent conversation with a rape victim’s mother, shocked the district in October. The SHO was booked in three cases including an FIR under the POCSO Act. The case also witnessed the Jalandhar rural police being reprimanded by the Punjab State Commission for Protection of Child Rights for the way it was handled. Former Phillaur SHO Bhusham Kumar was booked in three cases registered on October 14, 23 and 24 on the charges of sexual harassment and sections of the POCSO Act. He had allegedly sexually harassed a woman and her daughter when they approached him for justice. The case was concerning the rape of a minor girl, whose family and mother had approached him regarding the registration of an FIR concerning her rape.
The rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl by the father of her friend on the night of November 22 stood out as one of Jalandhar’s most gruesome crimes this year, sparking debate on women’s safety. The girl who had gone to visit a friend in the neighbourhood, was allegedly murdered by her friend’s father.
The accused was apprehended by angry residents, from whom, police rescued him and took him into custody. Jalandhar rural police also arrested three youths for gang raping a 35-year-old mother and her 19-year-old daughter on November 23, while holding the younger woman’s son-in-law, a five-month-old child, and two other children hostage. The perpetrators of the incident were aged 18.5 to 19. A 15-year-old girl inmate of the Gandhi Vanita ashram was also found dead at the ashram bathroom on November 21, two days after being brought to the institution from Ferozepur.
