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SINGAPORE \u2013 Right to the end of his life, retired police officer Jagjit Singh Sundar Singh did not want the people around him to worry.<\/p>\n
Despite his distinguished career, during which he rose to the high rank of deputy commissioner of police (operations) and coordinated operations in response to the Singapore Airlines Flight SQ117 hijacking in 1991, Singh, who died on Oct 8, did not like to talk about his work.<\/p>\n
His son, Daljit Ghoshal, 56, told The Straits Times on Oct 9 that his father was a humble man.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was always gentle, and he did not talk much about what he did. He was not somebody who liked to show (off). He was a quiet man,\u201d said Ghoshal.<\/p>\n
Singh, 86, died on Oct 8 and leaves two sons and a wife. He was hospitalised in September with pneumonia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt went away, came back, went away, came back, and then he got weaker and weaker and just couldn\u2019t fight it… his heart had weakened due to the narrowing of one of his valves, which was causing a problem with oxygen flow,\u201d Ghoshal added.<\/p>\n
A junior officer, who had served under Singh at Kandang Kerbau Police Station near Tekka Market, said Singh\u2019s heart was in the right place as a police officer.<\/p>\n
Kalidass S.K.S., 75, said Singh, then an acting superintendent in the 1970s, was already thinking about community policing and how to improve the police force.<\/p>\n
Many respected Singh because, even as deputy commissioner of police (operations), he would drive around at night to check on police officers from other divisions who were on duty.<\/p>\n
Said Kalidass: \u201cHe was an \u2018on-the-ground\u2019 officer who took pride in men\u2019s welfare and in correcting mistakes that police officers made.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe could have easily asked a junior officer to do the rounds, but he was different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singh\u2019s achievements can best be described as extraordinary. He joined the Singapore Police Force (SPF) in 1967 as an assistant superintendent of police and later rose through the ranks to become director of the Criminal Investigation Department.<\/p>\n
Singh was later promoted to deputy commissioner of police (operations) \u2013 becoming the highest-ranking Sikh officer in Singapore\u2019s police history at the time.<\/p>\n
Senior police officers remembered Singh as the ground operations commander during the nine-hour stand-off at Changi Airport, when Pakistani hijackers took control of SQ Flight 117.<\/p>\n
In the end, the four hijackers were killed after Singapore Armed Forces Special Operations Force soldiers stormed the aircraft.<\/p>\n
When he retired from SPF around 2000, Singh started work at CISCO (now known as Certis) the next day, leading a project to enable CISCO to undertake law enforcement and investigation work on behalf of statutory boards and government departments, according to a 2017 report by Asia Samachar.<\/p>\n
Ghoshal said: \u201cHe really didn\u2019t want to stop working. He wanted to contribute. He was very much into the idea of Singapore as a nation and the importance of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singh continued to serve and later worked at national water agency PUB in 2003, retiring at the age of 73 in 2013.<\/p>\n
For his service, Singh was awarded several medals by the SPF and honoured with national awards such as the Pingat Berkebolehan (Ef\ufb01ciency Medal), the Pingat Bakti Setia (Long Service Medal) and the Bintang Bakti Masyarakat (Public Service Star).<\/p>\n
While he could have retired quietly, Singh sought to inspire younger Singaporeans to keep the nation safe by pursuing careers in law enforcement, said Sarabjeet Singh, who was president of the Young Sikh Association (YSA) from 2018 to 2022.<\/p>\n
Jagjit was one of the prominent Sikhs featured in YSA\u2019s SG50 book, Singapore At 50 \u2013 50 Sikhs And Their Contributions.<\/p>\n
Said Sarabjeet, 42: \u201cHe shared his life experiences and contributions to Singapore because it was important to him that the youth know about the history and the complexities of law enforcement.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2017, Singh was quoted in Asia Samachar as saying that working as a police officer was extremely taxing and the pressure to deliver good results was intense.<\/p>\n
Yet, there was always time for Manchester United Football Club, Singh\u2019s favourite team.<\/p>\n
Kalidass, who last saw Singh in 2023 at a 75th birthday party for a former police officer, shared that not many people knew of Singh\u2019s unwavering support for \u201cMan U\u201d \u2013 he seldom missed a team match on TV.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis personal side of Jagjit Singh offers a warm and affectionate reminder that behind the disciplined and respected police commander was a man who also found simple joy and excitement in the beautiful game,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE \u2013 Right to the end of his life, retired police officer Jagjit Singh Sundar Singh did not want the people around him to worry….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/91650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}