A youth from Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district has been sentenced to death in Kuwait over charges of drug smuggling. Rajinder Singh (30) has been lodged in a Kuwaiti jail since January this year.

Rajinder Singh’s family members came to know of the decision to hang him on Sunday night. Since then, a pall of gloom descended on the family that has now appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, external affairs minister S Jaishankar and Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh to contact Kuwaiti authorities and save his life.

On Monday, Rajinder Singh’s family met Hoshiarpur MP and Union minister of state for commerce and industry Som Parkash with their plea. Family members say Rajinder Singh went abroad to earn money to support them. He has two sisters.

Rajinder Singh’s sister Inderjit Kaur told India Today TV, He went to Dubai in 2014. From there, he went to Doha to earn some money for our poor family. In January 2016, he went to Kuwait. His visa was supposed to expire in February 2019 and he was supposed to return to Punjab in March to get married.

In Kuwait, he started working with a youth from the same village. His name was Sonu. On the morning of January 15, he, along with two dozen co-workers, was waiting for the company bus at the bus depot. One of the men in the group asked him to hold a bag saying he had forgotten something in his room and would return quickly, Kaur said.

It was then that police arrived and started checking the bags of all the men in the group. Police found some drug-like substance in the bag that was handed to my brother by the other man. He was arrested and sent to jail. Even Sonu was arrested. Since then, both of them are in jail, Kaur added.

On Sunday night, my brother called us from jail. He said he has been sentenced to death by hanging and he doesn’t even have money to hire a lawyer.

The family has now demanded that the Centre and state government intervene and bring Rajinder Singh back home.

(With inputs from Sunil Lakha)