From ‘bullet for bullet’ to KPS Gill’s counterterrorism model: How Punjab Police dismantled Khalistani terror networks
· OpIndia
On 25th April 1983, DIG Avtar Singh Atwal was shot dead after leaving the Golden Temple in Amritsar. His body remained near the entrance while police personnel hesitated to retrieve it. The assassination of an officer of his rank at one of Punjab’s most sensitive locations became an early symbol of the state’s loss of authority. Terrorists had shown that they could murder a senior police officer and withdraw into a space where the administration was reluctant to act.
The danger soon extended through the entire force. Police patrols were ambushed, posts were attacked for weapons and personnel were assassinated near their homes. Constables, guards, drivers and Special Police Officers were killed alongside senior officers. Punjab Police later began preparing service citations for 1,784 personnel killed during the terrorism period, covering ranks from DIG to SPO.
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The Punjab Police that eventually dismantled organised Khalistani terrorism did not enter the insurgency as a dominant force. Static police positions became predictable targets. Junior personnel feared being identified outside duty, while the killing of suspected informers and their relatives weakened the intelligence system on which effective policing depended.
Punjab Police changed because its existing methods were no longer sufficient for the threat it faced. Under Julio Ribeiro and KPS Gill, the force acquired better weapons, mobile patrols, specialised teams, local intelligence networks and a system of sustained pressure against terrorist leadership and logistics. That transformation restored state control, but it also left documented crimes and unresolved allegations that remain part of the same history.
Why conventional policing stopped working
Ordinary policing depends upon complaints, witnesses, investigation and trial. Khalistani terrorist organisations attacked every stage of that process. Small armed groups moved across district boundaries, used safe houses and carried automatic weapons. Witnesses and suspected informers could be abducted or killed before their evidence reached a courtroom.
Local intelligence was indispensable because terrorists lived, travelled and hid within civilian surroundings. Police needed information about unusual movement, family links, couriers and shelters. Terrorist groups responded by punishing suspected informers and threatening their families. Fear prevented many villagers from approaching the police even when they did not support the armed groups operating around them.
Support, sympathy and submission were not the same. A family could shelter an armed terrorist because of ideological agreement, kinship or fear of being killed for refusing. A trader could pay money because he supported a group or because he had received a threat. The police had to identify the difference, but pressure for information also created the risk that coerced assistance would be treated as voluntary support.
Political uncertainty made the situation worse. Governments feared inflaming communal tensions, particularly when armed groups used religious premises. Police officers did not always receive consistent political backing, while negotiations with some leaders continued alongside security operations against others. The administration struggled to determine whether it was confronting a political dispute, a religious mobilisation, organised crime or an armed terrorist campaign.
Negotiation and political concessions did not immediately stop the violence. Armed organisations had acquired weapons, money, safe houses and their own command structures. Moderate Sikh politicians and leaders who supported compromise were threatened or assassinated, while competing terrorist factions had incentives to appear more uncompromising than their rivals.
By March 1988, 288 people were reportedly killed in a single month, including 25 police personnel. Another 259 people, including 25 policemen, were killed in April. The figures reflected the scale of the crisis confronting the state when Gill returned to command Punjab Police.
Julio Ribeiro and the projection of resolve
Julio Ribeiro took charge of Punjab Police in 1986 when the force was demoralised and increasingly defensive. His immediate challenge was institutional. Personnel needed to believe that the police leadership would support officers who confronted terrorists rather than leaving them exposed after an operation.
The phrase “bullet for bullet” became closely associated with Ribeiro, but he later said that he had not used those precise words. Ribeiro wrote that he had told journalists the police would be trained to fight back and use their weapons in self-defence. A newspaper headline turned that explanation into “bullet for bullet”. He also stated that he did not support police officers acting as investigator, judge and executioner.
Whatever its precise origin, the phrase projected a change in attitude. Ribeiro wanted terrorists to know that the police would no longer remain passive when attacked. He also wanted police personnel to know that their leadership recognised the danger they faced.
Ribeiro himself remained a target. In October 1986, terrorists attacked the Punjab Armed Police headquarters in Jalandhar Cantonment and nearly killed him. The attack showed that even the police chief could not rely on rank or location for protection.
Rebuilding morale required more than rhetoric. Police stations had to be fortified, personnel needed better weapons and vehicles, and commanders required the freedom to act quickly on intelligence. Families of personnel killed in terrorist attacks also needed compensation and institutional support. Ribeiro began the process of restoring confidence, but the operational system remained incomplete.
From static defence to mobile counterterrorism
One of Punjab Police’s greatest weaknesses was the number of personnel assigned to static positions. Gill later estimated that between 40 and 50 per cent of a force of approximately 35,000 was tied to pickets and checkpoints. These positions consumed manpower, created predictable targets and gave an impression of presence without necessarily producing control.
The imbalance in weapons was equally serious. Terrorist organisations had acquired AK-series rifles while many policemen still carried .303 rifles. Gill pressed the state and central governments for better weapons and supported an expansion of the force by approximately 25,000 personnel, taking its strength to around 60,000.
The more important change involved deployment. Personnel were shifted from isolated posts into mobile patrols capable of responding to intelligence and pursuing terrorist groups. Under “focal point patrolling”, police personnel and vehicles were concentrated at important locations from which they could move rapidly. Mobility made the force less vulnerable to planned attacks and allowed it to create pressure over a much wider area.
Ordinary police stations remained important, but they were no longer expected to handle the entire campaign alone. District commandos, Punjab Armed Police units, intelligence personnel, Special Police Officers and specialised operational teams added the capacity to conduct raids, protect vulnerable locations and pursue particular commanders.
Operation Black Thunder in 1988 showed the emerging preference for police-led action backed by specialist and paramilitary forces. Punjab Police operated with the National Security Guard and other central forces. The operation relied on containment and surrender rather than repeating the scale of the military assault conducted during Operation Blue Star.
Black Thunder did not end terrorism, but it denied armed groups a major symbolic sanctuary. It also showed that the state could act against terrorists using a religious complex without treating the shrine, its worshippers and the wider Sikh population as indistinguishable from the gunmen inside.
Why local police knowledge mattered
Central forces brought manpower, weapons and specialist capabilities, but Punjab Police possessed knowledge that could not be imported quickly. Local officers understood village geography, family relationships, dialects, transport routes, canal networks, religious institutions and agricultural routines.
An outsider might see an ordinary farmhouse, motorcycle or visitor. A local officer could recognise that the visitor had no apparent reason to be there, that the motorcycle was linked to another district or that a family relationship connected the property to a courier or commander.
This advantage explains why Punjab Police increasingly took the lead while the CRPF, BSF, Army, Intelligence Bureau and other central agencies supplied wider security, border protection and intelligence support. Central forces could dominate an area temporarily. Local police were better placed to identify the individuals, relationships and movement patterns hidden within it.
Local knowledge could also be abused. Property disputes, personal feuds and village rivalries could produce false accusations. An intelligence-led model was effective only when information was verified. When officers treated accusation as proof, the same local network could become an instrument of coercion.
Building the intelligence network
Gill’s counterterrorism model depended upon information moving quickly between districts and agencies. Earlier, Punjab Police, central police forces and intelligence agencies had often worked in separate compartments. Information collected in one district or organisation did not always reach the officers who could act upon it.
Regular intelligence meetings brought together Punjab Police, the Intelligence Bureau, R&AW, the CBI and representatives of revenue, customs, narcotics and other agencies. Joint interrogation teams were created so that information obtained from captured terrorists did not remain confined to one unit.
Human sources formed the core of the system. Police recruited village informers and “spotters” capable of identifying terrorists. These included former associates, survivors of attacks, relatives of victims and people living in affected areas. Captured or surrendered cadres could reveal safe houses, communication methods, couriers, commanders and the location of weapons.
The danger to informers was immense. Terrorist groups had shown their willingness to abduct and kill suspected police sources and threaten their families. Former militants who cooperated with the police also became targets. Rewards, protection and relocation were therefore used to keep some sources alive.
However, there were also allegations that coercion, illegal detention and threats against relatives were sometimes used to recruit informers or obtain information.
As intelligence improved, operations became more specific. Police could target a particular commander, courier or safe house rather than search an entire area without direction. A captured courier could expose a shelter. A recovered diary or telephone number could lead to another district. Each operation could generate the information required for the next.
The KPS Gill model
The model associated with Gill rested on local police leadership, intelligence before operations, coordination across districts, mobile deployment, sustained pressure and the targeting of terrorist leadership and logistics. Its objective was not merely to kill or arrest individual gunmen. It was to make the organisation around them incapable of functioning.
Commanders received priority because they controlled money, weapons, discipline and recruitment. Removing only lower-level cadres allowed organisations to replace their losses. Police therefore pursued senior figures while targeting couriers, shelter providers and weapons routes.
Continuous pressure was central to the strategy. A group pushed out of one district could not be allowed to reorganise elsewhere. Raids were followed by searches for contacts and safe houses. District officers were expected to exchange intelligence because terrorist organisations did not respect administrative boundaries.
Gill also introduced operations intended to break terrorist domination of rural Punjab after dark. Under “Operation Night Dominance”, police personnel and vehicles were concentrated at sensitive locations during the night. The purpose was operational and psychological. Villagers were more likely to share information when they believed that the state could protect them after sunset.
Likely targets such as bus stands, railway stations, government buildings and broadcasting facilities received additional protection. Uniformed and plain-clothes personnel were deployed around locations vulnerable to bombings and indiscriminate attacks. The aim was not only to catch terrorists but to prevent them from demonstrating that the state could not protect ordinary public life.
Targeting the terrorist ecosystem
Khalistani terrorist organisations depended on more than armed cadres. They required financiers, couriers, weapons suppliers, shelter providers, recruiters, extortion collectors and local intermediaries. Punjab Police increasingly targeted this ecosystem rather than treating each shooting or bombing as an isolated crime.
Financing became a major vulnerability. Terrorist groups raised money through extortion, kidnapping, robbery and threats against businesses. Their need for money pushed them into towns and cities, where they targeted traders and developed connections with criminal networks. Some groups became involved in bank robbery, looting and extortion.
The fragmentation of the movement accelerated this criminalisation. Rival commanders competed for money, weapons, influence and recruits. As groups interfered in daily life and demanded money or shelter, the distinction between ideological terrorism and criminal coercion became increasingly blurred.
Police exploited these divisions. Captured or surrendered cadres could identify former commanders and expose safe houses. Personal rivalries generated information, while the fear that a colleague had become an informer damaged trust within the organisations.
Cross-border support remained another part of the challenge. The Union Home Ministry’s 1991-92 annual report stated that the Army and paramilitary forces were deployed to check terrorist infiltration and the smuggling of weapons from across the border. The official record supports the existence of external routes and weapons flows, although allegations concerning specific handlers or operations require separate evidence.
Reclaiming villages and political space
Counterterrorism operations increasingly moved into rural areas where armed groups had established influence. Roadblocks, night patrols, intelligence-based raids and searches of farms, canals and abandoned structures restricted movement. Routes between villages and districts were monitored to prevent terrorists from shifting bases after an operation.
These operations also imposed costs upon civilians. Checkpoints delayed travel, searches entered private homes and detention created fear. Incorrect intelligence could bring an innocent family under suspicion. Human-rights organisations documented allegations of arbitrary detention, torture and threats against relatives during counterterrorism operations.
Restoring elections was another part of recovering political control. Elections scheduled for June 1991 were postponed and the process was later cancelled. Elections were finally held on 19th February 1992, and an elected government assumed office on 25th February after years of President’s Rule.
The 1992 election did not instantly restore normality. Terrorists threatened candidates and voters, while boycott calls and fear limited participation. Its importance was institutional. Punjab once again had an elected government, and political parties could begin returning to areas where armed groups had tried to dictate public behaviour.
As terrorist organisations lost the capacity to enforce shutdowns and punish informers, villagers became more willing to cooperate. Markets, transport services and political meetings gradually resumed. This did not mean that every resident supported every police method. In many places, it meant that the balance of fear had shifted.
Surrenders and organisational collapse
Surrender policies sought to separate lower-level recruits from hardened commanders. Legal concessions, rehabilitation, employment or protection could provide a route out while giving the police information about safe houses, arms routes and organisational structures.
Some surrenders were voluntary, others were negotiated through relatives or intermediaries, and some were alleged to have followed coercion or illegal detention. The term “surrender” therefore cannot be treated as describing one uniform process.
By 1991, the counterterrorism campaign had reached extraordinary intensity. The Union Home Ministry reported 1,196 encounters between January and November that year. It stated that 2,030 terrorists had been killed, 1,842 apprehended and 474 members of the security forces killed. These were official figures produced during the campaign and must be attributed as such.
Organised Khalistani terrorism did not collapse because of one officer or one operation. Leadership losses weakened command structures. Informers exposed safe houses. Extortion alienated civilians. Factionalism fractured organisations. Elections reopened political space, while movement between districts became more dangerous.
The cumulative effect was organisational suffocation. Terrorist groups could still conduct attacks, but they found it increasingly difficult to communicate, raise money, shelter commanders and replace losses. Punjab Police had moved from reacting to individual crimes to continuously dismantling the structures that made those crimes possible.
Encounters, disappearances and accountability
The most contested part of the campaign concerns police encounters. Many armed terrorists were killed in exchanges officially described as encounters. Families and human-rights organisations claimed that some victims had already been detained and were later killed in staged operations. Other allegations involved torture, secret custody, threats against relatives and enforced disappearance.
It would be wrong to present every encounter as fake. Punjab Police faced organisations equipped with automatic weapons and explosives, and nearly 1,800 police and security personnel were killed. It would be equally wrong to dismiss every allegation as propaganda. Court judgments and official proceedings established that some police personnel committed serious crimes.
Jaswant Singh Khalra’s case remains central to the controversy. Khalra investigated unidentified cremations and raised allegations against police officers in Tarn Taran and Amritsar. The Supreme Court upheld findings concerning his abduction and murder by police personnel and recorded the intimidation faced by witnesses.
Accountability has continued decades later. In August 2025, a CBI court sentenced five retired Punjab Police personnel to life imprisonment in a fake or stage-managed encounter case. The agency said the case involved men abducted in 1993 and later killed in fabricated encounters. The most recent conviction came in July 2026 where ex-Punjab Police cop Kashmir Singh was sentenced to 5-years of rigrous imprisonment for his role in abduction of Sikh man Baljit Singh. The judgment came 35 years after the incident.
These convictions prove that crimes were committed in particular cases. They do not prove that every police encounter was fabricated. Each allegation must be examined through evidence, official records and judicial findings.
Was the Punjab model effective?
By its principal security objective, the strategy succeeded. Punjab Police regained mobility, improved intelligence-sharing, targeted senior commanders and disrupted financing and shelter networks. Public cooperation increased as terrorist organisations lost the ability to punish informers freely. Elections returned and administrative control was restored.
The campaign is consequently studied as an example of local police primacy in counterterrorism. Central forces remained important, but Punjab Police supplied the village-level knowledge, informant networks and permanent presence required to dismantle organisations embedded within the population.
Could terrorism have been defeated without such severity? The historical record provides no simple answer. One may argue that relentless pressure was necessary against organisations that murdered witnesses, policemen and civilians. However, unlawful methods weakened the rule of law and inflicted punishment upon people who had never been convicted of a crime.
The force that changed to survive
The Punjab Police that emerged from the insurgency was fundamentally different from the force that had entered it. Static posts gave way to mobile patrols. Isolated district intelligence gave way to coordination. Ordinary police-station work was supplemented by specialised teams, informers, spotters and surrendered cadres.
Ribeiro helped restore the belief that the force could fight. Gill converted that confidence into a centralised counterterrorism system. Neither man acted alone. District SSPs, inspectors, intelligence officers, constables, SPOs, guards, drivers and informers sustained the campaign. Central forces and agencies provided additional protection, intelligence and operational strength.
The institutional cost was immense. Punjab Police lost nearly 1,800 personnel. Their families lived under threat, extraordinary deployment became normal and the force acquired a militarised counterterrorism culture that could not disappear immediately when organised terrorism declined.
Punjab also emerged changed. Civilians had lived between terrorist coercion and police suspicion. Some families remembered relatives murdered by terrorists. Others continued searching for people who disappeared after being taken into custody. These memories remain divided because different families experienced the same conflict through different forms of violence.
Punjab Police did not become an aggressive counterterrorism force in a vacuum. It changed under sustained assassinations, massacres, extortion, attacks on police establishments and the systematic killing of informers. The strategy destroyed the organisational strength of Khalistani terrorism in the state.