A 45-year-old pharmacy cashier, Janki Das, was shot dead in broad daylight at Shri Kumar Medical Hall in Sector 11, with the assailants firing thirteen rounds at him from very close range. A postmortem revealed the shots were fired from a distance of barely a foot and a half. The attack unfolded inside a shop with customers and staff present, in a market that sees among the heaviest daily footfall in the city, adjoining PGIMER.
THE WHO
The victim, Janki Das, was a native of Rohru in Himachal Pradesh, who had been living in Dhanas for nearly two decades. According to family members, he had moved to Chandigarh around 20 years ago from a modest farming family in Rohru that grows apples for a living, and had been working at the chemist shop for about a year. His wife, Ina Machret, was recently elected pradhan of the Dalgaon gram panchayat in Rohru subdivision of Shimla, and currently works at PGIMER. She has firmly rejected any personal motive behind the killing: “He had no enmity with anyone. If someone wanted to target him, they could have attacked him outside the shop,” she said. Relatives, including his brother Darshan Das and other family members, have echoed this, with the family suggesting the case could be one of mistaken identity, a possibility the police have not yet confirmed.
THE WHY — gangster angle takes centre stage
Hours after the killing, Canada-based gangster Goldy Dhillon claimed responsibility for the attack on a Facebook post that named “Kumar brothers” as the target, even though the firing took place at Shri Kumar Medical Hall — a different establishment, raising suspicion that the owners of other shops in the market may have been the intended target. The gang followed up with a chilling audio message, warning that anyone associated with Kumar Brothers, whether owner or worker, faced the same fate if their demands were not met, and that anyone in Chandigarh paying money to the rival Lawrence Bishnoi group would meet a similar end. Investigators believe this points to an extortion-driven motive. Sources indicated the police suspect the handlers behind the attack wanted to instil fear among city traders to enable easier extortion in future, though this has not been officially confirmed.
This is not the market’s first brush with extortion-linked gang violence. In April 2018, Sampat Nehra — a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang and one of those who claimed responsibility for the attack on singer Parmish Verma — made WhatsApp calls and sent voice messages to Kumar Brothers’ owner Ashwini Kumar, demanding money, with the demand eventually escalating to Rs 3 crore, a sum the businessman said he could not arrange. That case dragged through court for years before Nehra was acquitted in 2024 after the prosecution failed to prove the charges following non-appearance of the complainant in the court. The present shooting, occurring barely metres from where the 2018 extortion threat originated, has revived fears that the same gang ecosystem — now operating through proxies like Goldy Dhillon in alliance with or rivalry to the Bishnoi network — continues to view Sector 11’s chemist shops as soft targets.
THE HOW — chinks in policing
What has alarmed residents most is not just the killing but the manner of the escape. The crime took place a few metres from a check-post set up by the Chandigarh Police, yet the attackers walked out calmly. Eyewitnesses said bystanders shouted to catch the assailants, who simply fired into the air to scatter the crowd and rode off on a motorcycle with a third accomplice waiting. The escape did not end there — the accused, who had arrived on a stolen bike bearing a Punjab registration number, reportedly remained in the city even after the firing, with police carrying out intensive checking of hotels in Kajheri village and gathering more visuals of the men from CCTV cameras in the vicinity. After committing the crime, the accused fled Chandigarh, passing through several cities of Punjab before heading towards Delhi, with police teams raiding multiple locations to trace them.
That a trio of armed men could fire 13 rounds inside a crowded shop, exit through a market under watch, evade a naka barely metres away, linger in the city overnight, and then cross state lines undetected has raised uncomfortable questions about gaps in real-time surveillance, naka effectiveness, and intelligence-sharing on known extortion hotspots — despite the area’s documented history of gang threats since 2018.
WHAT IT SHOWS
The episode lays bare an uncomfortable contradiction. Chandigarh Police’s record on solving major shootouts and high-profile crimes — including past gangland hits and extortion rackets — has generally been strong, with arrests eventually made in most marquee cases. Yet the ease with which this attack was executed, in broad daylight, in one of the city’s most-watched commercial belts, suggests that visible policing infrastructure such as nakas and beat patrolling may not be translating into real deterrence against organised gangs operating with cross-border reach and social-media bravado. It also signals that extortion networks targeting traders, dormant since the 2018 Kumar Brothers case, may never have fully receded, and that gangster narratives claimed on Facebook and through audio messages are increasingly being used to assert dominance over India’s diaspora-linked criminal networks.
WHAT NEXT — and what needs to be done
Police have identified the trio behind the killing and launched a multi-state hunt to nab them, with teams tracking their movement through Punjab towards Delhi. Going forward, investigators are expected to focus on: tracing the stolen motorcycle’s origin and the Punjab registration trail; verifying the Goldy Dhillon claim against forensic and CCTV evidence to rule out a deliberate misdirection; questioning the rounded-up individuals already in custody; and examining whether the 2018 extortion pattern at the same market is connected to the current handlers behind the attack.
For residents and traders, the case underscores the need for stronger CCTV networks linked directly to police control rooms, swifter activation of nakas immediately after such incidents rather than after the fact, and a sustained crackdown on extortion rackets rather than case-by-case responses.
DGP Dr Sagar Preet Hooda said the police have laid hands on vital clues and major breakthrough is expected shortly.
