Punjab Transport Minister Laljit Singh Bhullar resigned from his post on Saturday following the death by suicide of a Punjab Warehousing Corporation official who had accused the minister of harassment, The Indian Express reported.
Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann accepted Bhullar’s resignation and directed Chief Secretary KAP Sinha to conduct an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Gagandeep Singh Randhawa’s death, The New Indian Express reported.
Mann said the resignation was necessary to ensure that the investigation could proceed without interference.
Randhawa was a district manager of the Punjab State Warehousing Corporation in Amritsar. He reportedly died by suicide at his home on Friday, leaving behind a video in which he purportedly said he was acting out of fear of Bhullar, PTI reported.
In the 12-second recording, the official had stated: “Your friend has consumed poison due to fear of minister Laljit Bhullar; I won’t survive now.”
Mann described the incident as painful and stated that harassment of any kind, especially to the extent that it leads someone to die by suicide, was unacceptable, ANI reported.
Bhullar’s ministerial portfolios will be reassigned to other members of the Cabinet, The Indian Express quoted Mann as saying.
The Punjab State Warehousing Corporation Field Employees Union alleged that Randhawa faced pressure to approve tenders for warehouses owned by political aides that did not meet the technical criteria, Hindustan Times reported.
Randhawa’s relatives, speaking to Opposition leaders, claimed that he had been summoned to Bhullar’s residence on March 13, physically assaulted, and forced to record a confession stating that he had accepted a Rs 10 lakh bribe.
The video was meant to blackmail the official into complying with the tendering process, the newspaper quoted the relatives as having alleged.
Bhullar, who is the Aam Aadmi Party MLA from Patti, has denied the allegations, saying that they were “baseless and false”. He said that he had stepped down to facilitate a fair investigation.
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