Less than a year ago, when 26-year-old Manjit Singh passed away, his father Mukhtiar Singh insisted that his death certificate carried the exact cause of his demise. Drug overdose, his son’s certificate read.
Neither the drugs nor the deaths is a rarity in Punjab’s Tarn Taran, a district located close to the India-Pakistan border. With the highest number of drug addicts in the state, it was an obvious choice for the 2016 film ‘Udta Punjab’, which explored the gravity of Punjab’s drug penetration.

Today, Mukhtiar has become a crusader of sorts, who out of his two-bedroom house in Patti in Tarn Taran district, is trying to “save Punjab” through his ‘Kaffan Bol Peya” (meaning “shroud has spoken”) campaign.
In March 2016, Mukhtiar marched with his dead son’s body on the streets of Patti to SDM’s office and penned an appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his son’s kaffan to save Punjab’s youth from drugs. He says his letter hasn’t reached Modi.

Video: The Quint
Music: Big Bang Fuzz