When Punjabi celebrities were threatened

Singer Parmish Verma recently hit headlines when he was reportedly attacked by a gangster. The gangster was also booked for making extortion calls to actor Gippy Grewal. This goes on to show that although Punjabi industry is one of the fast-growing regional entertainment industries in India, all is not well. While on one hand, Punjabi music is being constantly criticised on the grounds of vulgarity, Punjabi singer and actors, on the other hand, are receiving serious threats from the goons. Here we take a look at celebrities who faced similar ordeal.

On Saturday evening, Gippy reported having received an extortion threat via video call on Whatsapp from gangster Dilpreet Dhahan. He is the same gangster booked for the attack on Parmish Verma. According to the reports, Gippy was allegedly asked for a good amount of extortion money or and in not giving so, he was threatened to bear serious consequences. For a matter of fact, Dahan reportedly warned the actor-singer that there’s going to be a repeat of Parmish Verma incident.

Meanwhile, Gippy has roped in a private security team and has flown overseas. The star will be staying out of India for some time now.

Recently, during the promotions of the movie ‘Carry On Jatta 2’, when actor-singer Gippy Grewal was talking of TimesofIndia.com, he opened up about the issue of Punjabi artists being lately targeted for extortions and brutal attacks. He said, “Though I don’t know much about all the cases except for the recent one (attack on Parmish Verma), be it Punjabi industry or any other for that matter, the issue is severe and leaves a really bad impact.” Least did he know that he will be the next target.

Prior to Gippy Grewal, it was singer-actor Parmish Verma on the hit-list of Gangster Dilpreet Singh Dhahan. Parmish, with a friend, was attacked when he was returning from a show in Chandigarh. According to a TOI report, four to five people were following the star from the event venue and the attackers overtook Parmish’s car near Sector 74. Thereafter, they fired shots at the artist, leaving him and his friend injured. Luckily, as soon as the goons left, Parmish made a call to SSP Kuldeep Singh Chahal, who took him and his pal to the hospital.

After the attack, Dilpreet Singh Dhahan and Sampat Nehra took responsibility of the attack. They took it to Facebook to boast about their actions. In fact, Dhahan didn’t stop at one post; he kept on putting threatening statuses on his social media.

As of now, Parmish is completely on his feet. He broke his silence on social media and said that the attack was made as the gangster wanted to have the extortion money.

Recently, a young budding Punjabi singer, Navjot Singh, was allegedly shot dead in Dera Bassi. According to the reports, his body was found with five bullet wounds, lying in a pool of blood near a factory at a vacant plot.

Though the investigation is going on, the reason behind the murder has not been revealed. According to Navjot’s family, the singer had no enmity with anyone. Police couldn’t even call it a loot case, as Navjot’s wallet, cards, phone, gold chain and everything was intact.

On April 20, Punjabi singer-politician Balkar Sidhu registered a complaint with the Mohali cyber cell about the hacking of his Facebook account, followed by extortion calls for money. According to a TOI report, the Balkar was initially the hacker asked him to give Rs 8400 if he wanted to have his account back. Taking the matter lightly and thinking it to be an act of someone who simply wanted to have some easy money, Sidhu transferred the amount. However, events took an ugly turn from there, and Sidhu was allegedly receiving constant extortion calls and the demand for money from Rs 8400 rose up to lakhs. That's when he reached out to the police for help.

The cops assured Balkar Sidhu that they will handle the matter and then only the singer-cum-politician felt little relaxed.

While the cops were still filling the blanks regarding the cases of Parmish Verma and Balkar Sidhu, another Punjabi singer, Rai Jujhar claimed to have received death threats. The Jalandhar based singer logged an FIR in the city police station against the threatening call he allegedly received on his office’s phone.

Rai Jujhar, then took to his social media account to share about the disturbing call with his fans. In the video, he said that while recording at a studio, he got a call from an unknown source threatening to kill him. He also added that the unidentified person said that the singer would have to bear consequences if he would not stop from making inappropriate songs and videos. However, the singer claimed that all his songs are meant for family entertainment and thus, the allegations are baseless.