04
Oct
Bathinda (Gurpreet Singh) — In a gruesome incident underscoring escalating rural violence, a 62-year-old former village sarpanch was hacked to death with an axe in Punjab’s Bathinda district on Sunday. The victim, identified as Jagtar Singh Tara, a resident of Phus Mandi village, was killed inside a liquor vend where he had stopped to make a purchase. The assault marks the second violent killing of an erstwhile village head in the state in quick succession, following the recent fatal shooting of former sarpanch Navtej Singh in Ludhiana district. According to preliminary police reports, the suspect, identified as Gurbakhsh Singh from…