Harkirat Singh, grandson of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, died of a gunshot injury on Sunday at his house with his family claiming that he was injured in ‘accidental firing’ while cleaning his licensed revolver.
40-year-old Harkirat was admitted to PGIMER here with a gunshot wound in the head and succumbed this afternoon. His cousin and Congress MP from Ludhiana, Ravneet Singh Bittu, told reporters that Harkirat was “in depression” for a long time and indicated that he may have committed suicide. Police said that they are inquiring into the case.
“Harkirat received bullet injury in his head,” Sector 3 Police Station’s SHO, Neeraj Sarna said. “According to the statement given by the family to police this evening, Harkirat sustained a bullet wound in his head while cleaning his gun at his residence in Sector 5 here. They claimed that it was an accidental fire.
“Inquest proceedings under Section 174 of the CrPC (Code Of Criminal Procedure, 1973) are being carried out. Postmortem examination would be carried out tomorrow by a board of doctors either from PGIMER or Govt Hospital at Sector 16 Chandigarh,” Sarna said.
Bittu, who reached here from Ludhiana after learning about the incident, said Harkirat, who was the Sarpanch of Kotli village in Ludhiana, had met with an accident some months ago and was not keeping well since.
“He was under treatment for depression at PGIMER for past some time. Last year he had a major accident in which he sustained a head injury and had slipped into coma for sometime. He was taking medicines for depression, but off and on he used to get bouts of depression,” Bittu said.
“In the morning today, he had gone for a walk on the lake. After he returned to the house, he told his wife that he wanted to take a bath. “Harkirat’s wife went inside the kitchen, but within minutes he shot himself,” Bittu claimed.