2019 Incident of Drug Inspector’s Murder Shared to Blame Punjab’s AAP Government

Neha Shoree was a district drugs inspector in Punjab who was shot in 2019 when the Congress was in power.

Neha Shoree was murdered in 2019 when Congress was in power in Punjab

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A photo of a woman is being shared massively on social media, claiming that she is drug inspector Dr Neha Shoree, who was shot dead by a drug peddler after she got his license cancelled.

The posts also take a dig at the Aam Aadmi Party government of Punjab and CM Bhagwant Mann, blaming them for the incident.

However, we found out that the incident is from 2019 and took place when the Congress was in power in the state.

Neha Shoree was a senior health officer who was shot dead on 29 March 2019, by Balwinder Singh, who, reportedly, had a grudge against the officer for raiding his pharmaceutical shop and getting his license cancelled.

CLAIM

Social media users are sharing posts which claim that as soon as the Aam Aadmi Party came to power in Punjab, drug inspector Dr Neha Shoree, who was taking strict action against contraband drug dealers, was shot dead.

An archive of the post can be seen here.

Several users shared shared posts with the same claim on Facebook and Twitter and the archived links can be seen here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We ran a reverse image search on the photo on Google and came across an article on Neha Shoree's murder published by the Times of India on 22 December 2019.

The viral photo was seen in an article by ToI, published on 22 December 2019.

The Quint had also reported on the incident in 2019, which noted that Shoree was shot dead in Punjab by one Balwinder Singh, after she recovered intoxicant drugs during a raid in 2009 at his chemist shop.

The raid took place in Ropar, Punjab and Singh's license had been revoked after he failed to provide supporting documents for possessing "35 types of tablets used by drug addicts."

It added that Singh had attacked Shoree at her office in Kharar, Punjab and shot himself on being caught, later succumbing to his injuries.

Evidently, a murder case from 2019 was revived, falsely blaming the current AAP government in Punjab.

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