Batala: A long-standing property dispute escalated into a mass casualty tragedy late Tuesday night in Mundi Karaal village, located under the Sekhwan police station limits in the Batala subdivision of Gurdaspur district. A local youth allegedly shot dead his aunt and his minor cousin before gunning down an Army soldier friend who attempted to intervene. Following the triple homicide, the perpetrator returned to his residence and turned the firearm on himself.
The primary assailant, identified by police as Manjot Singh, had been embroiled in an ongoing family feud over agricultural land. The dispute reached a flashpoint late at night when a heated argument broke out, prompting the youth to retrieve a firearm from inside the residence. Senior police officials confirmed that the accused first targeted his aunt, Harjit Kaur, killing her on the spot, before opening fire on his 12-year-old cousin, Hari Amritpal Singh, who succumbed to fatal bullet wounds shortly after.
An Indian Army soldier and friend of the family, identified as Pargat Singh, rushed to the scene upon hearing the gunshots and tried to disarm the assailant. The shooter turned on him, chasing him outside the residential compound and shooting him in the chest before his body was discovered in nearby bushes. The assailant then retreated to his kitchen and took his own life. Batala Deputy Superintendent of Police Sukhinder Singh, along with specialised forensic teams, arrived at the crime scene to oversee data collection and coordinate the transfer of all four bodies to the Civil Hospital in Batala for post-mortem examinations.
