Jarnail Singh
Jarnail Singh journalist
Jarnail Singh is a journalist from the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran. He hurled a shoe at Home Minister P Chidambaram at a press conference on 7th of April 2009over his responses to the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) clean chit to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Jarnail Singh, a journalist of the daily Dainik Jagran flung a shoe at Home Minister of India Mr P Chidambaram and made the Indian nation sit up in alarm. Jarnail Singh, a Sikh himself says that his act may have been wrong but the cause remains real. Singh was upset like many in his community that the Congress Party had given a poll ticket to the accused of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The CBI had given a clean chit to Congressman Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, and this was followed by the court’s acquittal of the two.
That makes many people ask: Who is Jarnail Singh?
Is he a firebrand journalist, a staunch Sikh or the new poster boy of the Sikh community's campaign for justice? Just who is Jarnail Singh?
Long before he made headlines as the man who hurled a shoe at the Home Minister, Jarnail Singh has cracked many stories on his beat - defence.
He started off as a reporter in Amar Ujala after a diploma in journalism from the YMCA.
The 35-year-old has been a correspondent with Dainik Jagran for over a decade. Friends and family say the agression Jarnail showed is unlike him.
“He is a very calm person and very religious too. He goes to Gurdwara every day. Must have been something that happened that place and time, that he was angered,” said Aman, a friend of the journalist mired in controversy.
Jarnail Singh too felt he could have reacted differently. “I admit my method was wrong, but the sentiment was right. I do not wish that any journalist should behave in this manner,” said the journo by his own admission.
