TADA: The Law That Filled Punjab’s Jails
Confessions to police, bail beyond reach, tens of thousands detained and a conviction rate near one percent: TADA built a parallel legal universe, and Punjab lived in it longer than anywhere. The act, the numbers, and the lesson.
Read MoreKPS Gill: The Supercop and the Controversy That Follows Him
Saviour of Punjab to one accounting, architect of a machinery of disappearance to another: the two tenures of KPS Gill, the campaign that ended the militancy, and the ledger that has never been closed.
Read MoreJulio Ribeiro and the Bullet for Bullet Years
Sent to a collapsing force in 1986, Julio Ribeiro rebuilt Punjab Police, survived two assassination attempts, coined the era's most fateful phrase, and spent decades auditing what bullet for bullet achieved and what it licensed.
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The Killing Fields of Majha: Tarn Taran and Amritsar in the Late 1980s
The border belt of Amritsar and Tarn Taran was the insurgency's epicentre: the corridor from Pakistan, the recruiting ground, the site of the worst predation from both sides, and the cremation registers that later revealed the disappeared.
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The Bus Massacres: When the Militancy Turned Its Guns on Passengers
From Muktsar 1986 to Fatehabad 1987 to the Baddowal trains of 1991, militants stopped buses and killed passengers selected by religion. The pattern, the strategy behind it, and what the massacres did to the movement's claims.
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The Air India Kanishka Bombing: Terror Crosses the Ocean
Flight 182 was destroyed over the Atlantic on June 23, 1985, killing 329 people, in a Babbar Khalsa plot built and loaded in Canada. The conspiracy, the institutional failures, the acquittals, and what Kanishka meant for the movement that claimed it.
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Operation Black Thunder: The Siege That Went Differently
In May 1988 the state retook the Golden Temple complex with a siege, snipers, patience and the press watching: two hundred surrenders, minimal damage, no martyrdom. What Black Thunder proves about 1984, and what it does not.
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Babbar Khalsa, KCF, KLF, BTFK: Mapping the Militant Groups
Babbar Khalsa's doctrinaire cadres, the KCF's declared army, the KLF and BTFK second wave, the splinter gangs and the black cats: mapping Punjab's militant organisations and the logic that made their violence uncontrollable.
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The Panthic Committees and the Declaration of Khalistan, 1986
From a Sarbat Khalsa at the scarred Akal Takht, a five member Panthic Committee proclaimed Khalistan on April 29, 1986 and announced the Khalistan Commando Force. The declaration, Barnala's fatal response, and the franchise of factions it founded.
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The Assassination of Sant Longowal: Killing the Peacemaker
Twenty six days after signing the Punjab Accord, Sant Longowal was shot dead inside a gurdwara at Sherpur. The man, the decision to sign, the killers, and how spoiler violence murdered Punjab's best chance at early peace.
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