In the 28 days between November 23 and December 20, eight grenade/bomb attacks targeting Police Stations and Police posts have been engineered in Punjab. While these constitute, at worst, low grade terrorist mobilisation, they reflect, once again, the widening overlap of Khalistani extremism and organised criminal operations in the state. They indicate, moreover, an externally fuelled and sustained effort to fish in the increasingly troubled political waters of the state. The recent flurry of incidents includes:
November 23: A bomb attack failed at the Ajnala Police Station in Amritsar District. The device planted outside the Police Station contained RDX, but did not detonate. Gangster Harpreet Singh aka Happy Passia, who currently operates from the United States (US), later claimed responsibility. Passia had also claimed a grenade attack in September 2024 on the house of a former Police officer in Chandigarh, among other incidents.
November 29: An explosion was reported near a vacant Police check post at Gurbaksh Nagar in Amritsar District.
December 2: A grenade attack was reported at the Ansaro Police Post in Nawanshahr in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar District. The grenade did not detonate and was successfully defused.
December 4: A powerful explosion occurred at the Majitha Police Station in Amritsar District, shattering windows. Initially, Police described the incident as a tyre burst; however, subsequent posts on social media suggested it was a grenade attack.
December 13: Two unidentified men on a motorcycle threw a grenade near the entrance of the Ghania Ke Bangar Police Station in Batala, Gurdaspur District, though it failed to explode. The incident surfaced after a social media post, allegedly by Happy Passia and Gopi Navanshahria, claimed responsibility and threatened further attacks on Police checkpoints after 6pm [IST]. Police have not dismissed the claims.
December 17: An explosion took place at the Islamabad Police Station in Amritsar in Amritsar District. It damaged the cement sheets on the building’s roof and burned some wires.
December 18: An alleged grenade attack occurred at Bakshiwala Police Chowki (Post) in Batala in Gurdaspur District. The low-intensity blast in the Bakshiwala area of Kalanor at around 8pm [IST] occurred at a check post which was unoccupied, preventing any loss of life or property. However, a small truck stationed outside the Chowki caught fire. The Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF) subsequently claimed responsibility for the attack, on social media, declaring that it was in retaliation to allegedly objectionable remarks against Sikhs by Police personnel from Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar. The group added that it would continue to “respond to such provocations under the leadership of Ranjit Singh Jammu and Jaswinder Singh Bagh aka Manu Agwan”.
December 20: A blast occurred at Wadala Bangar Police Chowki under the Kalanaur Police Station of the Gurdaspur Police District, causing minor damage to a door and some brickwork. The Chowki had been closed ten days earlier, and there were no casualties.
Significantly, early arrests and investigations have reconfirmed that the failure of Khalistani groups to find ideologically motivated recruits has forced them to rely on gangsters who, in turn, have recruited low value assets, including drug addicts, juveniles and petty criminals, to carry out these attacks. Thus, on December 13, the Punjab Police announced the arrest of two suspects linked to the grenade planted outside the Ajnala Police Station on November 23, Jashandeep Singh aka Danny from Jandiala Guru and a 17-year-old juvenile, who reportedly confessed to the crime. Two China-made P86 hand grenades and a Turkey-made 9mm Zigana pistol and ammunition were recovered from their possession. The duo, reportedly drug addicts, had been lured to plant the bomb in exchange for drugs. Punjab’s Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav subsequently claimed that the attack had been engineered by Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) operative Harwinder Singh Rinda, under the patronage of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The role of Happy Passia and Germany-based Jeevan Fauji was also indicated.
December 14, Punjab Police claimed to have solved the case of the December 2 grenade attack at the Ansaro Police Post in Nawanshahr with the arrest of Yugpreet Singh aka Yuvi, from Mohalla Qazian, Jaskaran Singh aka Shah, a resident of Mohalla Jagoteyan and Harjot Singh aka Jot, from Dugglan Mohalla in Rahon. A country-made pistol, a revolver and six live cartridges, were recovered from their possession. Police claimed that the trio was controlled by KZF handlers based in Germany, the United Kingdom (UK) and other countries, and had been tasked with targeting police establishments and minority leaders in Punjab and Haryana. The group had allegedly received INR 450,000 in funding over the preceding six months. They retrieved the hand grenade from a ‘dead letter box’ on GT Road in Jalandhar on November 28, and later hurled it at Police Post Ansaro in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar on December 2.
Significantly, while a coordinated effort to create panic is visible in this succession of incidents, Police officers underline the reality that no exceptional capabilities are required to carry out these acts, and the persons who have been arrested do not reflect any significant training in the use of arms and ammunition. These incidents, thus, reflect a low level of engagement even by the organised criminal elements involved, and such groups have evidently not committed their better cadres to these attacks.
A series of attacks targeting Police establishments had earlier been recoded in 2021-2022. That string of incidents included: A grenade blast at the Nawanshahr Punjab Police Crime Investigation Agency office near the Trevini Gate of the Pathankot Army Cantonment on November 7, 2021; a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) attack on the Punjab Police Intelligence Headquarters at Mohali on May 9, 2022; and an RPG attack on the Sarhali Police Station in Tarn Taran on December 10, 2022. There were no casualties in these incidents as well, though the targeting and use of RPGs indicated higher levels of commitment and training. Nevertheless, this run petered out after a cluster of arrests.
Of greater concern is the persistence of the attacks in the present case, as well as some evidence of a wider deterioration. Crucially, 2024 has recorded the highest number of Khalistani-gangster linked fatalities in Punjab – at nine – since the start of an ongoing series of targeted killings which commenced in 2016, after a hiatus of eight years in which no such fatality was recorded. The 2024 killings include:
January 14, 2024: Awan Kumar Khullar aka Sonu Cheema, the sarpanch (head of the Panchayat, village level local self-Government institution) of Adda Chabal village, was shot dead by two unidentified assailants in broad daylight in Tarn Taran District. According to the Police, the Germany-based gangster Amritpal Singh Bath, originally from Mianpur, was behind the killing. Police revealed that Bath had been booked in 18 criminal cases of killing, attempt to murder and other heinous crimes.
February 26-27, 2024: Suraj Parkash aka Babbu a gangster, was killed, and another, Harpreet, was injured, in a gang war on Hambran Road in Ludhiana in the intervening night of February 26 and 27. Persons belonging to both groups were members of the Sukhpreet Singh aka Sukha Badewalia gang in the past. Badewalia was shot dead by another gang member in May 2023.
March 4, 2024: A Jammu-based gangster, Rajesh Dogra aka Mohan Chir, was shot dead by four unidentified assailants outside a shopping mall in Sector 67 in Mohali, Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar District, Punjab. According to the Police, the shooting was the result of a fallout from a gang war.
April 4, 2024: Rattandeep Singh, a former Khalistani militant associated with the Bhindranwale Tiger Force of Khalistan (BTFK), was shot dead by two unidentified bike-borne assailants at Balachaur in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar District. Rattandeep was a hardcore militant involved in various terror activities, including a bomb blast in Chandigarh in 1999. He was arrested in 2014, after evading authorities for years, and was released in 2019. Soon after the incident, gangster Gopi Nawanshahria, presently located in California, US, took to social media to claim responsibility for the killing. “Rattandeep was acting as a Police tout and has committed a fraud with innocent youngsters,” he posted on Facebook.
April 8, 2024: A youth from Dera Baba Nanak town in Gurdaspur District, Sandeep Singh aka Shera, was found murdered with sharp weapons in the night of April 8. Shera was facing several criminal cases. Soon after the incident, gangster Happy Passia claimed responsibility on Facebook, declaring that Sandeep Singh was a Police informer who also worked with the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
April 13, 2024: The President of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) in the Nangal town of Rupnagar District of Punjab, Vikas Prabhakar aka Vikas Bagga, was shot dead by two unidentified assailants at his confectionery shop. Subsequent arrests and investigations exposed links to ‘entities’ in Pakistan and Portugal.
October 7, 2024: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Rajwinder Singh was shot dead by unidentified assailants at Thakkarpura village, Tarn Taran District. The incident occurred when three men on a motorcycle opened fire on Singh’s car as he was celebrating his party’s victory with colleagues. Later, in a Facebook post, Doni Bal and Prabh Dasuwala, both associates of gangster Gopi Ghanshyampuria, claimed responsibility for the attack.
October 9, 2024: Gurpreet Singh aka Bhodi was shot dead by four unknown assailants at the Hari Nau village in Faridkot District. Gurpreet was a close associate of Sukhraj Singh Niamiwala, who had been leading protests for justice related to the Behbal Kalan Police firing incident in October 2015. On November 9, the Punjab Police arrested two key shooters and members of the Arshdeep Singh aka Arsh Dalla gang in connection with this murder. Dalla is based in Canada, and is also known to head the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), since the killing of its earlier leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, Canada.
October 23, 2024: A former sarpanch and commission agent, Gurdeep Singha was shot dead by four unidentified assailants at the grain market in Sathiala village in Baba Bakala in Amritsar District. The involvement of gangsters is suspected.
These incidents are significantly compounded by others that failed to neutralize intended targets, as well as by a wide spectrum of criminal activities that underpin the Khalistani terrorist enterprise, in tandem with its linkages with organised crime, including extortion, intimidation, gang wars, continuous smuggling and seizure of weapons and explosives, and proliferating narcotics trafficking that have contaminated Punjab’s social, political and security environment. In combination, however, these would not go very far beyond law-and-order issues.
It is, however, the context of these activities that is becoming increasingly disturbing. Those who seek to create difficulties in India, and particularly in Punjab, cannot have failed to notice the present political vacuum, the toxic jockeying for political space, the electoral collapse of the traditional political formations in the state, and the failure of new leaderships. In the Assembly Elections of 2022, the traditionally dominant parties in the State were almost completely wiped out – the incumbent Indian National Congress secured 16 seats and the Shiromani Akali Dal–Badal, a paltry three, with the Bharatiya Janata Party managing to cling to just two. The novice Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept to power with 94 of the total of 117 seats, to inherit the burden of massive debt, an ailing economy, multiple industrial, agrarian and environmental crises, and overwhelming public expectations.
Two-and-a-half years later, the AAP leadership is struggling to cope with public disappointment, even as the marginalized parties, struggling with desertions and factionalism, explore divisive, often malicious, strategies to claw their way back into the centre of the political discourse. Crucially, moreover, the rising disarray in Panthic (Sikh religious) politics, with factionalism, mutual invective and toxic conspiracies tearing apart the Akali Dal and the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (the supreme Sikh religious authority and administrative body for the state’s Gurudwaras).
Further, the parties ruling the Centre and the State, on opposite sides of the purported ideological spectrum, have long been locked in a vicious death match, and seem to find it entirely acceptable to undermine policy and public weal, to harm the other.
Worse, a farmers’ agitation, ongoing since February 13, 2024, for the fulfilment of the Centre’s promises, made in a settlement to end an earlier and massive 13-month long agitation, is reaching crisis point, with the seniormost leader, Jagit Singh Dallewal, on the 28th day of his fast unto death at the time of writing, with his condition deteriorating rapidly. Despite this, and despite exhortations from the Supreme Court to intervene urgently, the Centre has stubbornly refused to meet its own earlier commitments and has, in the intervening years, adopted a vengeful orientation particular to Punjab’s farmers. If Dallewal loses his life to the fast, this could well be a turning point in Punjab, and potentially, well beyond. Astonishingly, the Centre has chosen this moment to push forward a new “National Policy Framework on Agricultural Marketing”, which most farm organisations and many in Punjab believe is an effort to bring back certain elements of the much-reviled three farm laws that were reluctantly withdrawn under the intensity of the earlier 13-month farmers’ agitation.
Many vultures, moreover, wait hungrily in the wings, with extremist political formations, after years of marginalization and humiliation, scrambling for any scraps that may fall off the volatile high table.
While none of these elements, in itself, constitutes any grave or imminent security threat, in combination they create an enveloping environment of instability and tension. Crucially, it must be recognized that the present purpose of the Khalistani-gangster leadership operating from abroad, as well as of their state sponsors, is not to engineer an insurgency from the outside, but to catalyse an insurrection from within. If domestic ferment in Punjab continues along its present and insalubrious trajectory, the scope for their success can only augment.
