Shinder Kaur (60) sits silently on a rickety charpoy in the courtyard of her dilapidated house at Sherewala village near Sidhwan Bet in Punjab’s Ludhiana district, grief writ large on her face. Lined up before her are six framed photographs. Five are of her sons, all of whom she claims died due to chitta addiction. The sixth is of her husband, who died years ago in a road accident.In her trembling hands, she clutches a small passport-sized photograph of her sixth and last son Jasvir Singh (20), who too, she says, “fell prey to chitta overdose”. “Jasvir died on January 14. He was with another youth when he collapsed after consuming drugs. The companion admitted to injecting drugs with him before fleeing the scene in panic,” says Shinder Kaur, her voice choking.The authorities have confirmed that a case of culpable homicide has been registered against two persons, including a woman alleged to have supplied the narcotics.Shinder Kaur recounts nearly a decade and a half of unimaginable loss that began with the death of her husband Mukhtyar Singh, who was addicted to alcohol, in 2012. Since then, she says, she has cremated all of her six sons: Kulwant Singh (20) in 2013, Gurdeep Singh (25) in March 2021, Jaswant Singh (20) in July 2021, Raju Singh (33) in January 2022, Baljeet Singh (17) in March 2023, and now Jasvir. “In the past five years, I have cremated five of my sons. All lost to ‘chitta’ addiction. The drug menace is deeper than the authorities think it to be. It needs some serious action,” she asserts, questioning the efficacy of the Punjab Government’s ‘Yudh Nasheyan Virudh’ (anti-drug drive) campaign.“The government must act really tough if women like me aren’t to lose their sons. Half-hearted efforts won’t do. Peddlers, big or small, must be put behind bars. Only then can Punjab be saved,” maintains Shinder Kaur.Ludhiana (Rural) Senior Superintendent of Police Ankur Gupta, however, refuses to believe that all of the woman’s sons died of drug overdose. “Her five sons are believed to have died due to alcohol consumption. Only one—in 2022— died due to chitta,” he says.Regarding Jasvir’s death, the SSP says preliminary police investigation suggests he died due to excessive alcohol consumption at a nearby dera. “The exact cause of death will be known only after the viscera report is out. Still, a case has been registered on Shinder Kaur’s complaint as she alleged that her son was injected a drug overdose. Two persons have been arrested on the charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The wife of one of the arrested accused, against whom the woman has levelled allegations of drug peddling, is yet to be nabbed,” says Gupta.Recounting the tragedies, Shinder Kaur says her youngest son was only 16 when he died of an overdose. “I lost two more sons within a year. They were 21 and 22. In 2022 and 2023, two more were gone. And now it’s Jasvir. It’s unbearable,” she says.She claims ‘chitta’ is openly available in the village, and that “repeated complaints to the police have yielded no results”. Shinder Kaur is now left with only her daughter-in-law Paramjit Kaur, the widow of her eldest son, and 13-year-old grandson Rahul. “My only mission in life is now to keep by grandson away from all this (‘chitta’),” she says, breaking down as she holds all photographs of her lost family to her chest.
