CHANDIGARH: Senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Brigadier (retd) Jagdish Gagneja who was shot at in Jalandhar in August, succumbed to his injuries in a Ludhiana hospital on Thursday morning.
Security was beefed-up in Jalandhar, where his body was cremated on Thursday evening. All the top RSS and BJP leaders were present.
Punjab RSS president Brij Bhushan Bedi said, “The people are saying that the law and order situation is very bad in the State.” The BJP and its ally Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) are in power in Punjab. “In foreign countries, heinous crime cases are solved within days. The latest example is the New York blasts case in the US. But here, it is taking time,” Bedi added.
Punjab Deputy Chief Minister and SAD leader Sukhbir Singh Badal, who reached the cremation ground after the ceremony, was almost over, also paid his last respects.
The 65-year-old Gagneja, who was the Punjab RSS vice-president, was shot at by two masked motorcyclists in Jalandhar on August 6. Gagneja and his wife were followed by the attackers from their residence at Deep Nagar in Jalandhar Cantonment.
The low profile Gagneja, who had joined the RSS after retiring from the Army in 2004, had no security cover as he had earlier refused to take police protection.
Since the Punjab police could not make any headway despite offering a reward of Rs 10 lakh and a job as a constable to anyone offering information, the case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) following pressure from the BJP. The central agency sleuths have been in the city for a week but they too have not been able to find a clue.
The post-mortem of Gagneja, who was earlier shifted from a Jalandhar hospital to Ludhiana’s Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, was conducted at the DMC in the presence of the CBI.
“As the investigations have been handed over to the CBI, we trust the apex agency to solve the case soon,” Bedi said. He demanded that help be taken from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as well.