Who Is Turning Punjab Into a Killing Ground?

Policemen shot on duty, village leaders murdered, influencers targeted and overseas handlers allegedly recruiting vulnerable youth. Punjab’s recent violence may have different causes, but the warning signs are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Punjab has seen too many bullets in too little time. A policeman leaves for duty and never returns. A village representative is attacked in broad daylight. A social-media creator goes to collect his car and is shot dead. Another police officer narrowly survives an ambush. The attackers frequently arrive on motorcycles or scooters, fire quickly and disappear. Hours or days later, a gangster account or an obscure organisation sometimes surfaces online to claim responsibility, leaving investigators to determine whether the claim is genuine, opportunistic or deliberately misleading.

These incidents are not all connected, and Punjab Police have themselves drawn distinctions between the different strands of violence. Some killings may arise from personal disputes or criminal rivalries, others are being examined for gangster connections, and in attacks on police personnel investigators have alleged possible links to Pakistan-based handlers. The killing of social-media personalities has raised a separate concern about gangsterism, vigilantism and so-called moral policing.

There is no responsible basis yet to compress all of this into one grand conspiracy. But Punjab does not need one conspiracy for the situation to be deeply worrying. What should concern the state is the environment taking shape around these incidents: illegal weapons, vulnerable young recruits, narcotics and smuggling networks, overseas gangsters, social-media intimidation and an unsettling willingness to use a gun as the final answer to a dispute.

When Even the Uniform Becomes a Target

The attacks on police personnel are perhaps the starkest warning. Reporting in late September documented four Punjab Police personnel killed in approximately six months, with investigators examining an alleged supply chain involving Pakistan-based handlers, local recruits and existing smuggling channels. Police sources said vulnerable people, including unemployed young men and drug users, could be recruited with financial incentives, supplied weapons and instructed to carry out attacks. These remain police allegations under investigation, but the pattern has become serious enough to occupy the attention of Punjab’s senior security establishment.

In February, ASI Gurnam Singh and Home Guard jawan Ashok Kumar were shot dead at a checkpost in Gurdaspur district, close to the international border. Other attacks followed, including the killing of ASI Joga Singh near Majitha in May and ASI Harjit Singh in Amritsar in September. By early October, GRP ASI Sukhchain Singh had survived another shooting near Ajnala.

Two days after the Ajnala attack, an obscure group calling itself Tehreek-e-Taliban Hindustan, or TTH, issued a social-media poster claiming responsibility. Punjab Police did not authenticate that claim and continued investigating multiple possibilities, including personal enmity. That uncertainty matters because anyone can attach a name to a social-media graphic, and a responsibility claim should never substitute for investigation.

Yet another aspect of the police assessment is particularly unsettling. Officers quoted in recent reporting have suggested that groups such as TTH may not necessarily resemble traditional militant organisations with clearly identifiable cadres and command structures. One senior officer reportedly described it as a “paper organisation”, a name that can provide a brand for violence while those allegedly directing or facilitating the attack remain physically distant.

If that assessment is eventually substantiated, Punjab may be confronting a form of violence adapted to the digital age. A foreign-based handler no longer necessarily requires a large underground organisation. He may need little more than a smartphone, an encrypted messaging service, access to an existing criminal network and a local young man desperate enough to accept money for carrying a weapon.

This is where Punjab’s long-running struggles with drugs, illegal arms and cross-border smuggling acquire a much more dangerous dimension. Police have alleged that the same ecosystem used to traffic contraband can potentially be exploited to move weapons or connect handlers with local recruits. None of this means every gun crime in Punjab is foreign-directed, but it does mean the availability of illegal weapons and the ability of criminal networks to operate across jurisdictions should be treated as a security problem far larger than the individual shooter.

The person pulling the trigger may be the easiest link in the chain to identify. The harder question is who supplied the pistol, who supplied the money, who selected the target and who convinced a young Punjabi that becoming a hired shooter was worth the price. That is the supply chain Punjab must break, and it cannot be broken by arrests alone. The most frightening part of the alleged model is the vulnerability it exploits. Addiction, unemployment, debt, criminal exposure and the attraction of quick money can transform young people into disposable assets for men who may themselves be sitting safely hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.

Punjab cannot allow its youth to become ammunition in somebody else’s conflict.

When Public Life Starts to Feel Unsafe

The unease does not stop with attacks on police. On October 6, Ashwani Kumar Devgan, the sarpanch of Toot village in Tarn Taran district, was shot dead by motorcycle-borne attackers. His driver was injured. Initial police statements said no prior threat, extortion demand or established enmity had surfaced, while members of the family subsequently spoke about threats and an alleged demand for money. Investigators must reconcile those accounts and establish motive, but the image itself is difficult to shake: an elected village representative travelling through an ordinary Punjab setting, suddenly confronted by men carrying guns.

The implications extend beyond politics. The sarpanch remains one of the most immediate faces of public authority in rural Punjab, and when village representatives begin to wonder whether travelling to the market, sitting at a shop or attending a local gathering could expose them to targeted violence, something has changed in the relationship between ordinary public life and fear.

Punjab has also witnessed other recent killings of village-level figures, although police have attributed different motives to individual cases. That qualification matters enormously. A land dispute is not terrorism. A personal feud is not evidence of a foreign conspiracy. A political allegation is not proof. But ordinary citizens do not experience violence in neat investigative categories. They experience the gunshots, they see the body covered outside a hospital, they attend the funeral, and they watch another CCTV clip of men escaping on a motorcycle. Eventually, repeated violence produces its own psychological consequence, even where individual motives differ.

When Morality Becomes a Pretext for Violence

The killing of social-media creator Madhusudan Sandhu, popularly known as Mad Sandhu, brought that anxiety into another sphere entirely. Sandhu, a makeup artist and influencer, was shot dead in Amritsar on October 3. Police began examining several angles after the killing, including earlier criticism and threats connected to his clothing and social-media content. Reporting said a Nihang figure had previously objected to his online presence. The investigation must determine whether those earlier disputes were connected to the murder, and they cannot simply be assumed to be the motive. Yet the case is particularly disturbing because Punjab has confronted the language of so-called moral policing before.

In June 2025, influencer Kanchan Kumari, popularly known as Kamal Kaur Bhabhi, was found murdered. Bathinda Police said the killing was motivated by “moral policing” and arrested two suspects. According to police, those accused had objected to content they considered vulgar or objectionable. The case produced a wider debate in Punjab over free expression, obscenity, vigilantism and the dangerous idea that individuals may appoint themselves guardians of community morality.

That debate should never have been allowed to fade. Punjab is perfectly capable of discussing what is appropriate online. Parents can question social-media culture, religious leaders can criticise content they consider offensive and communities can debate whether influencers are damaging social norms. But none of those arguments gives anyone the right to intimidate or kill.

A pistol cannot preserve culture. A gangster cannot become the custodian of morality. Murder does not acquire legitimacy because somebody attaches religious or cultural vocabulary to it.

This distinction is especially important for Sikh society. Sikh identity cannot be allowed to become a convenient costume for vigilantism, gangsterism or extremism. The Sikh tradition is far larger than those who use religious symbols or community rhetoric to rationalise violence. Its history contains extraordinary examples of sacrifice, human dignity, resistance to oppression and protection of the vulnerable. Those values are not defended when criminals threaten citizens from foreign soil, when social-media disagreement becomes justification for murder, or when impressionable young Sikhs are pulled into criminal or extremist networks that treat them as disposable.

The New Face of an Old Security Problem

There is a temptation whenever Punjab experiences a cluster of violent incidents to reach immediately for comparisons with the darkest decades of its modern history. That would be irresponsible. Punjab today is not Punjab of the 1980s. Its security institutions are different, intelligence capabilities are stronger, society has changed and, most importantly, the overwhelming majority of Punjabis want nothing to do with political violence or extremism.

But history does not have to repeat itself exactly for history to offer a warning.

Violence evolves with technology. A handler who once required physical couriers can communicate electronically. Propaganda that once needed pamphlets can move across continents in seconds. A gangster can sit overseas and project power into a Punjab village through social media. Weapons can travel through criminal networks that have nothing ideological about them, and a vulnerable teenager does not have to join an organisation in any formal sense. He may simply be given a target, a weapon and an amount of money.

Punjab is also seeing wider concerns about foreign-linked networks beyond individual shootings. Recent police investigations have included allegations involving internet-connected cameras allegedly used by Pakistan-linked operatives to monitor sensitive movements, as well as separate narco-terror investigations involving drugs, weapons and alleged cross-border links. These are separate cases and should not be conflated with the targeted killings, but they illustrate why the security environment of a border state requires constant vigilance.

Punjab therefore needs something more serious than political accusations every time a shooting occurs. The state’s police, central security agencies, intelligence organisations and border forces possess different capabilities and must cooperate wherever the evidence leads. Foreign networks do not care which agency receives credit for stopping them. Gangsters do not respect administrative boundaries, and illegal weapons do not become less dangerous because one investigation belongs to Punjab Police and another to a central agency. Centre-state coordination on security should not be treated as political surrender by either side. For a border state, it is common sense.

Where evidence establishes involvement from Pakistan-based handlers, that evidence should be pursued relentlessly and presented transparently. Where investigators discover a local gangster network, that network should be dismantled. Where a killing turns out to be personal enmity, authorities should state that just as clearly. Where an online responsibility claim is fake, it should be exposed quickly rather than allowed to acquire mythology through repetition. Clarity matters because uncertainty is itself a weapon. Rumour fills the space left by silence, gangsters benefit from fear and extremist propagandists benefit from confusion. The answer is credible investigation and visible rule of law.

Punjab’s Hardest Battle May Be for Its Young People

There is another battle Punjab cannot win through policing alone: the battle for its young people. Every discussion of foreign handlers and criminal recruitment eventually returns to the same uncomfortable question: why is a local recruit available? Why can somebody sitting abroad convince a young Punjabi to pick up a weapon for money? Why do gangsters acquire glamour? Why does a pistol become a symbol of power? Why does a young man facing addiction, unemployment or social frustration sometimes encounter a criminal recruiter before he encounters a meaningful opportunity?

Security agencies must catch those who recruit young shooters, but Punjab must also reduce the pool from which they recruit. A society that talks about unemployment only during elections and addiction only after a drug death is leaving openings for people who understand how to exploit despair.

The cost is eventually paid by everyone: by the family of the policeman who does not return from duty, by the children of a murdered village leader, by the parents of the young man who becomes a shooter and then dies in an encounter or spends decades in prison, and by citizens who begin wondering whether an outspoken social-media post could attract someone with a gun. Ultimately, the cost is paid by Punjab itself.

The most important question today is therefore not whether all these killings belong to one network. Police evidence currently does not justify that conclusion. The question is what happens when multiple forms of violence begin flourishing in the same social environment: gangsterism, illegal firearms, cross-border criminal networks, narcotics, online intimidation, foreign handlers allegedly seeking local recruits, self-appointed moral vigilantism and personal rivalries that end in shootings.

None has to share the same command centre to produce the same outcome: fear.

Punjab should be deeply concerned without becoming hysterical. It should be vigilant without becoming suspicious of entire communities. It should confront extremism without confusing extremism with Sikh identity. It should investigate foreign interference without explaining away every local crime as an external conspiracy. And it should strengthen security without allowing political competition to weaken cooperation between Chandigarh and New Delhi.

Punjab has paid an enormous price for peace. Too many families remember what sustained violence does to a society, and too many homes have already experienced the knock on the door, the hospital corridor and the funeral procession. That history should not become a source of panic. It should become a source of wisdom.

The danger before Punjab today is not necessarily the return of the past in its old form. The danger is allowing a new form of violence to become normal before society recognises what is happening. A policeman being shot should never become routine news. A sarpanch being murdered should never become another statistic. A social-media creator being killed after threats should never be dismissed as the inevitable consequence of controversy. Young Punjabis being allegedly recruited by criminals or foreign handlers should never be accepted as merely another law-and-order problem.

The bullets may come from different guns, the motives may turn out to be different and the men behind them may never have met. But the consequence for Punjab is the same every time violence becomes easier and fear becomes more familiar.

Punjab has fought too hard for its peace to allow guns, gangsters, foreign handlers or self-appointed guardians of morality to decide its future. That peace must now be protected before another shooting becomes just another headline.