Chandigarh: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from Patti, district Tarn Taran, and former Punjab transport minister Laljit Bhullar was arrested on Monday in connection with the suicide by state warehousing corporation Amritsar district manager (DM) on Saturday. The warehousing DM Gagandeep Singh Randhawa had ended his life by consuming poison on Saturday after making a video clip in which he purportedly alleged harassment and intimidation by Bhullar.Bhullar resigned as Cabinet minister on Sunday after chief minister Bhagwant Mann directed him to do so and was booked along with his father Sukhdev Bhullar and personal secretary Dilbagh Singh, later the same day for abetment to suicide (Section 108), criminal intimidation (351(3) and common intention (3(5) of the BNS.Bhullar was arrested from Mandi Gobindgarh, district Fatehgarh Sahib, on Monday afternoon though he said in a post on Facebook that he was surrendering voluntarily: “I have full faith in the law of the country, and also have unshakable faith in the justice system. I have not run away anywhere, I am in my Punjab. Believing in truth and justice, I myself am surrendering at Mandi Gobindgarh’’, he added.
Meanwhile, even as the incident had whipped up a political storm in the state since Saturday, Randhawa’s family also gave a 24 hour ultimatum to Punjab AAP on Sunday that they will not allow Bhullar’s post mortem and cremation until Bhullar was arrested. Besides Bhullar’s arrest, the leaders of opposition parties also demanded the case be handed over to the CBI.
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Upinder Kaur, wife of deceased Randhawa in her complaint to police alleged that the accused had meted out sustained harassment, humiliation, assault and mental torture to her husband which led him to take his own life. She alleged that the accused trio kept on forcing Randhawa to favour them in the tender process and when he refused to do so he was brutally humiliated and assaulted and intimidated that they will eliminate him and his family.She further held that Randhawa was called to Bhullar’s residence on March 13 last, where he was brutally assaulted and humiliated and forced to admit that he took Rs 10 lakh for allotting a warehousing tender to another party.