insurgency

The BRN has a long-standing demand to create an Islamic state by merging the three southern provinces and separating them from the Buddhist-majority country.

Local memorials, police webpages, press-freedom records and family recollections preserve fragments of those killed, while incomplete archives, political commemorations and cultural narratives continue shaping which victims remain visible and which gradually disappear from public memory.

Methods adopted by Ribeiro and Gill restored state control and weakened Khalistani groups through intelligence, mobility and coordination that ended insurgency.

Senior commanders received headlines, but constables, drivers, ASIs and Special Police Officers often survived only in FIRs and memorial pages, even as repeated assassinations, ambushes and family killings hardened the force’s response irreversibly throughout Punjab.

The killings crossed religious lines, as Sikh and Hindu journalists alike were targeted for opposing Khalistan, defending communal harmony or refusing to surrender editorial judgement and broadcasting language to armed terrorist organisations during the insurgency.

"We are not obliged to talk about news stories whose facts remain questionable," retorted a senior Pakistani spokesperson.

From Dhilwan and Muktsar to Lalru, Ludhiana and Sohian, repeated massacres showed a deliberate pattern in which commuters, workers, families and worshippers were selected as targets because they were Hindu civilians during Punjab’s insurgency years.

Bus and train massacres, assassinated editors, murdered Sikh opponents and targeted police officers reveal a history increasingly reduced to statistics while militants receive political context and sympathetic retellings.

The CBI court found Kashmir Singh was involved in Baljit’s abduction and illegal confinement, rejected his plea for probation, sentenced him to 5-year RI and imposed a Rs 10,000 fine, with all substantive prison sentences against him ordered to run concurrently.