Who was the Haryana INLD chief, Nafe Singh Rathee, who was shot and killed in Jhajjar?

 Famous Jat leader Nafe Singh Rathee, 66, was cruelly shot and killed on Sunday in the Jhajjar district of Bahadurgarh, Haryana.

Rathee started his political career with the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and has been in politics for more than 40 years. From 1996 to 2005, he represented Bahadurgarh as an MLA on the INLD ticket. Later, he advanced to the position of president of the party's Haryana branch. In addition, he served two terms as Chairman of the Bahadurgarh Municipal Council.

After the INLD refused to provide Rathee a ticket from Bahadurgarh in 2014, he joined the BJP. But after receiving a similar dismissal from the BJP, he ran on his own and joined the INLD again in 2018.

In January 2020, Rathee was named president of the INLD's Haryana chapter, with senior INLD leader Abhay Singh Chautala serving as his mentor. Following the party's underwhelming showing in the state assembly elections the year before, this happened. He took over for Birbal Das Dhalia, who had been elevated to the INLD's national president post.

Rathee's political future, however, was put in jeopardy in January 2023 when he was prosecuted under Section 306 (abetment to suicide) and named as the primary perpetrator in the suicide case of Jagdish Rathi, the son of former BJP minister Mange Ram Rathi. He was stopped from leaving the country by a lookout circular issued by the Jhajjar district police.

The 55-year-old Jagdish Rathi had cruelly poisoned himself to death. Nafe Singh was accused by his family of harassing them over a property issue. Before passing away, Jagdish shared an audio tape in which he accused Rathee and others of harassing him and held them accountable for any damage that might come his way.

Rathee's son Jitender Rathee was detained shortly afterward in relation to the installation of an electrical metre, which further complicated matters. The Rathee family denounced this detention as an effort to silence critics and threaten them.

Chautala brushed these claims aside as petty political posturing.

Remarkably, a week prior to his untimely death, Rathee—who was also the President of the Indian Style Wrestling Association of India—had represented India at Ethnosports in Turkey.