IFFCO chairman Surinder Jakhar shot dead accidentally

Surinder Jakhar, chairman of IFFCO and son of former Lok Sabha speaker Balram Jakhar, was shot dead Monday under mysterious circumstances near here, police said. Surinder was brought in an injured condition to a hospital here, some 350 km from Chandigarh, where he was pronounced dead. His driver too sustained bullet injuries. IFFCO (Indian Farmers Fertiliser Co-operative Ltd.) is a state-run fertiliser major. Surinder Jakhar's younger brother Sunil is a Congress legislator in Punjab.
Surinder, the second of the three sons of senior Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh governor Balarm Jakhar, is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter. He was involved with the cooperatives for nearly three decades. Surinder Jakhar's family, in a statement to the police, said he was killed in an accidental fire from his pistol at his farmhouse in Maujgarh village, SP (Abohar) Varinder Brar said. The exact cause of the death would be known after the post mortem, the SP said. Expressing grief over Surinder Jakhar's death, Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said his contribution to the cooperative movement was invaluable. "His death is a personal loss to me as we always have close ties with the Jakhar family," he said.