THE MAKING OF A HITMAN
TARGETED KILLINGS Hardeep Singh, alias Shera, an introvert, outsider always, is the son of a marginalised farmer who attempted to rise above his lot through the power of the gun
Sorrow sits still in the courtyard of a two-room home in Majri Kishnewali village in Punjab’s Fatehgarh Sahib district. It is the abode of Balvinder Singh, a retrenched worker from Saudi Arabia and his wife Surinder Kaur. The two seem shocked into resignation that their son just 21, who they thought was settled has been arrested for seven high-profile killings in the state since 2016.
FATEHGARH SAHIB: Sorrow sits still in the courtyard of a two-room home in the fields of Majri Kishnewali village near Amloh in Punjab’s Fatehgarh Sahib district. It is the abode of Balvinder Singh, 43, a retrenched worker from Saudi Arabia because of a chronic heart problem and his wife Surinder Kaur, 41. The two seem shocked into resignation that their son just 21, who they thought was ‘set’ (Punjabi usage for settled) in Italy, has been arrested for seven high-profile killings in the state since 2016.
“We did not even know that he was here. We have not seen him since last year but on video calls,” says Balvinder. “His name was Hardeep Singh and this ‘Shera’ we are just hearing now,” says Surinder, almost unable to relate the two faces of her son.
Police sources say that the nomenclature of Shera was taken by him after Khuban Shera, a gangster of Khuban village in Fazilka, who was allegedly killed in an encounter with the Punjab Police in Bathinda in 2012. Hardeep even had a lion tattooed on his chest, believed to be the reason, along with his bushy eyebrows, for the police tracing him.
No one wishes to talk about Hardeep in the village and as we try to ask for the way to his parental home, we are brusquely told to go beyond into the fields and a villager adds, “No Hardeep Singh or his family ever lived in this village.”
FALL OF FORTUNE
However, Baba Jeet Singh, an old village preacher, opens up to tell of the woes that befell the family and they lost their land. The Baba now owns the other half of the divided home that is more posh with sloping tiled roofs and a swan-shaped water tank, non-resident Punjabi style. This portion belonged to Daljit Singh, the elder brother of Balvinder, until he sold it to build a home in Amloh town. “The fields surrounding the two homes are sold out though their grandfather had a large land-holding here,” says the Baba.
Hardeep’s story of moving away from his biological parents begins when he was barely nine or 10 when his father’s elder brother Daljit Singh adopted him while migrating to Italy. “Our fortunes were completely fallen and we were left with a small land holding. My brother decided to move to Italy and I went to work as labour in Saudi Arabia,” says Balvinder.
He adds that he worked there for eight years at a stretch but the second time he was sent home by the company after two years because he suffered a heart attack. “He was advised an operation but we did not have the resources and he is just taking local medicine,” says his wife.
FITNESS FREAK
Their son though fluent in speaking Italian dropped out of school and worked with his uncle but a few years ago he fell out with his uncle over some differences that developed between his father and uncle over a small piece of land left with them.
“Two years ago, he told us that he was going to work on his own. He also said that he was cutting off his hair as he was not getting a job with his turban,” the mother says.
When asked what work he was doing in Italy, she hesitates and adds: “He told us that he was working as an electrician.”
Had he taken to addiction of alcohol or something else? To this question her answer is firm, “Not at all. He would fight with anyone who took a drink, even his own father. When visiting us, he would mostly stay at home and only in the evenings would he go to the gym. He was always fond of running and exercising.”
When we ask if they have a picture of him, she says softly: “There were seven pictures of him in one fancy frame in the living room and the police took them,” she says and then adds as though she is asking herself, “Why did they take all of them?”
However, the two add that they have not been troubled by the police in any way.
The father shares some pictures of him sent on his phone that shows him posing amidst fitness machines and a board in the background has ‘Hawai Gym’ written on it. The mother’s last plea to us is not to take her husband’s or her picture as they already felt humiliated enough.
At the Bajwa Gym in Fatehgarh Sahib, opposite the Banda Bahadur College, where the police claim to have arrested him, he was known for his prowess at working out with the 100-kg bench press and said to have been living in the town in a rented room. The owner is not there but a notice in the state-of-art gym says no one will be allowed to work out without registering their identity cards. The front-desk boy says, “We are more careful after the Shera incident.”
Yet another story of a young man becoming an incident.
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We did not even know that he was here in the state. We have not seen him since last year but on video calls and photos. His name was Hardeep Singh and this ‘Shera’ we are just hearing now. BALVINDER SINGH, father of Hardeep Singh, alias Shera