Mansa: The protest by the family and action committee of anti-drug activist Parvinder Singh Jhota continued for the 14th consecutive day on Monday, with demonstrators refusing to withdraw their demand for the resignation of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav.

CM Mann said the government had accepted all legitimate demands raised by Jhota's family and the action committee, and that the decision on when to perform the last rites now rested with the family and the committee — that is the government's claim. The protest continuing, with the resignation demand intact, indicates the family and the committee do not yet accept that position.

The CBI, which is probing the murder, had already widened its pharmacy inspections in Mansa in the preceding days, including searching a Veer Nagar premises for a second time.

Separately, wholesale and retail chemists across Punjab announced that they would stop selling three categories of medicines: tramadol, pregabalin, and all psychotropic and narcotic drugs. The Punjab Chemists Association on Sunday asked its nearly 27,000 member chemists to return existing stocks to wholesalers and distributors by the end of the month. The association's general secretary, G.S. Chawla, said two to four per cent of "black sheep" exist in every profession, but that after the Mansa incident all chemists were being treated as culprits, adding, in the association's words, that the government's 'Yudh Nashian Virudh' had in fact become 'Yudh Chemists Virudh'. The association appealed to the government to provide such drugs to patients at government facilities, Jan Aushadhi kendras and civil hospitals.

Jhota was shot dead on October 13 inside a medical store in Mansa while confronting its owner over the alleged illegal sale of habit-forming drugs. Those sale allegations are under CBI investigation, not established findings.