India, Aug. 24 -- Calls for leniency have poured in from several quarters in Punjab for 28-year-old Harjinder Singh, the Indian-origin truck driver facing a potential 45-year jail sentence in the US after his illegal u-turn on a highway in Florida resulted in three deaths.

Plus, there is a wider worry dogging Punjabis after the incident; that Harjinder's wrong turn now essentially means no more US work visas for truckers.

Leaders from the state's ruling and opposition parties have taken it up immediately, given the sheer scale of Punjabi drivers' participation in the trucking sector at home and abroad.

Cabinet minister Sanjeev Arora of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) wrote to the union government that the US government's decision to suspend ...