A 35-year-old man named Jeetu is dead in Mansa, Punjab — suspected drug overdose, his family demanding justice on the streets — and Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini is now holding Punjab's ruling government accountable in unambiguous terms. In a post on X on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, Saini condemned both the tragedy and what he described as a wider pattern of state mismanagement on the drug crisis.

Writing in Hindi, Saini called Jeetu's death 'behad dukhadayi' — deeply sorrowful — and pointed directly to allegations swirling in Mansa: that police removed the body over the family's objections, and that protesters who gathered seeking answers were detained. 'These allegations raise serious questions,' Saini wrote, and he did not leave the criticism abstract.

The Promise That Now Haunts AAP in Punjab

The sharpest barb in Saini's post is a callback to a specific election pledge. During AAP's 2022 Punjab assembly campaign, the party made the drug menace a centrepiece of its pitch — promising to eradicate it within six months of taking power. That promise, repeated at rallies and in campaign material, became one of the most cited commitments of a landslide victory. More than four years on, Saini invoked it directly: families in Punjab are still losing their children under what he called the government's 'kushasan' — misrule.

It is a charge that carries political weight precisely because the six-month pledge was so specific and so public. Opposition parties have returned to it repeatedly as a measuring stick against which AAP's Punjab performance can be held.

Parvinder Jhota's Family and the Pattern of Unheard Voices

Saini also named a second family — that of Parvinder Jhota — as still struggling for justice in a separate drug-related case. The mention is pointed: this is not one incident, the post implies, but a recurring failure of accountability. Families grieving, villages protesting, and, in Saini's telling, a government that has not answered either effectively.

Punjab's drug crisis is not a new story. It has outlasted multiple state governments — Congress, Akali Dal, now AAP — with trafficking networks operating along border corridors proving stubbornly resistant to enforcement. What changes with each government is the political ownership of the failure. Right now, that ownership sits with AAP, and Saini's post ensures the pressure stays visible.

What Saini Is Demanding — and Why It Matters

Saini closed with a direct list of demands: the Punjab government must listen to these voices, act impartially on complaints, and take effective steps against drug trafficking. The language is measured — this is an opposition leader using the register of accountability, not inflammatory rhetoric — but the underlying message is pointed. An elected state government, in his framing, has failed both its promise and its people.

Whether Punjab's home department orders an independent inquiry into the Mansa incident — the handling of Jeetu's body and the detentions — will be the clearest early indicator of how seriously the state responds to the mounting pressure. For the families still waiting, that response cannot come too soon.