India, Oct. 21 -- Seven days after 42-year-old anti-drug activist Parvinder Singh Jhota was shot dead in broad daylight, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday formally registered an FIR and took over the probe into his murder in Punjab's Mansa district.

The development comes hours after Union home minister Amit Shah met Jhota's family and the announcement by Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Tuesday morning, bowing to the family's demand for a central probe.

A specialised CBI team, led by a deputy inspector general (DIG), arrived in Mansa around midnight and formally requisitioned all case files, records, and physical seizures from the City-2 police station, where the original murder case was registered on October ...