Encouraged by his mother to quit and ‘sit with farmers in Delhi’, Lakhminder Singh Jakhar, posted as Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Prisons, in Chandigarh resigned on Saturday to stand with protesting farmers against new farm laws.

Jakhar said his 81-year-old mother does farming and ‘supervises the entire farming operations in the village’. He said that his mother encouraged him to resign to sit with farmers in Delhi. ‘I am likely to visit Delhi, soon,’ he said, as reported by Indian Express.

‘I could not look into her eyes, when she asked me what my opinion of our farmer brothers and sisters braving the cold in Delhi since November 26 while they had been on roads in Punjab as well since mid-September was,’ he recollected.

‘I have completed all the formalities, and hence, I don’t think that there will be any hassle in accepting my resignation,’ he said. The 56-year-old officer was suspended in May over graft charges. He, however, reinstated two months ago.

In his resignation letter, he offered ‘to deposit three months’ salary of the notice period and other arrears as well, so that he can be relieved at the earliest. ‘I am a farmer first and a police officer later. Whatever position I have got today, it is because my father worked as a farmer in the fields and he made me study. Hence, I owe my everything to farming,’ Jakhar said.

Before joining the Punjab police, he served as a Captain in the 14 Punjab (Nabha Akal) regiment as short service commission officer from 1989-1994. Jakhar has submitted the resignation to the Principal Secretary (Prisons), DK Tiwari, as told by Parveen Kumar Sinha, Assistant Director-General of Police, Jails. ‘He was reinstated about two months ago and was currently posted at Chandigarh headquarters,’ Sinha said.

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