Punjab’s border bloodshed: Guns, grenades and a trail police can’t crack

Giving details of the incident, Soni said he was sitting at his petrol pump around 10.30 pm when two men arrived on a motorcycle with their faces covered and suddenly opened fire.

It was not an isolated incident.

A wave of targeted killings, weapon snatching, extortion-linked attacks and a hospital bombing has exposed the deep roots of organised crime and cross-border smuggling networks in Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Ferozpur, even as police struggle to break the chain.

In barely ten days, Punjab’s border districts have witnessed a chilling sequence of violence: a police officer shot dead on his morning commute, a Home Guard jawan attacked and disarmed at a strategic headworks, a grenade detonated inside a hospital emergency ward, and two men — a grocer and a schoolteacher — murdered in separate incidents in broad daylight.

On the night of June 4, the firing at Soni’s petrol pump became the latest addition to the growing list of violent incidents that have rattled the border belt.

A policeman’s last ride

On the morning of May 24, Assistant Sub-Inspector Joga Singh, 54, was riding his scooter towards Amritsar when two motorcycle-borne assailants intercepted him on the Fatehgarh Churian-Majitha road, barely a kilometre before Majitha town. They shot him dead and vanished.

A traffic department officer with decades of service, Singh was a resident of Ghaniye village in Gurdaspur district.

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SP (D) Aditya Warrier said arrests were “a day or two away”.

The rifle that vanished

Four days later, in the dead of night on May 28, Home Guard jawan Sukhwinder Singh was on sentry duty at the Harike Headworks bridge in Ferozpur district when unknown assailants armed with sharp-edged weapons attacked him. They inflicted serious injuries, overpowered him and fled with his SLR rifle, magazine and ammunition.

Singh was rushed to Government Medical College, Faridkot.

SP (D) Ferozpur Manjit Singh said, “We have been investigating the case and the accused will be arrested soon.”

A grenade in a hospital ward

On June 2, a blast ripped through the emergency ward of a private hospital near the bus stand in Kalanour town of Gurdaspur district. The hospital owner had reportedly received ransom calls, though police have not yet established the motive behind the attack.

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Within six hours, police apprehended Dharminder alias Tindi of Tarn Taran, who allegedly executed the blast.

But his arrest only deepened the central question: where did he get a live grenade?

SSP Gurdaspur Aditya said, “Of course, someone here must have been involved. There is definitely local involvement. People received them and handled them. But we haven’t identified everyone yet.”

The modular crime network

The same district is still awaiting answers in another high-profile case. Police have yet to arrest those who supplied the weapon used in the killing of two police personnel at a border check-post in Adhian village in February.

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Explaining the challenge, the SSP said: “The modular chain makes it harder. People work through separate modules, so the first, second, third and fourth persons often have no direct connection with each other. Often, a packet is handed to someone who carries it for money. He hides it somewhere and doesn’t know who will pick it up. Those who pick it up don’t know who kept it there.”

The supply chain for weapons and grenades in Punjab’s border belt appears to have been engineered specifically to frustrate investigation.

Two murders, one afternoon

On June 1, two unidentified motorcycle-borne gunmen rode up to Gaba Kirana Store in Makkhu town of Ferozpur district and opened fire on its owner, Gurcharan Singh, killing him on the spot before disappearing into the afternoon traffic.

SP (D) Manjit Singh said the investigation was underway and arrests would be made soon.

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Hours later, in Amritsar, government school teacher Jagdeep Singh had just dropped his daughter at a tuition centre and was riding home. Near the Naraingarh drain, a group of assailants surrounded him on a deserted stretch of road and attacked him with sharp-edged weapons, slitting his throat.

He died where he fell, his body later found face down on the roadside.

DSP Jandiala Baljit Singh said raids were underway.

No arrests have been made in either case.

Questions that refuse to go away

The spate of attacks has raised troubling questions about the reach of organised crime networks operating across Punjab’s border districts and the ease with which weapons continue to circulate despite repeated police crackdowns. Investigators acknowledge that smuggling and criminal syndicates increasingly operate through compartmentalised modules, making it difficult to trace the chain from handlers and suppliers to executors on the ground.

Congress MP from Gurdaspur Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa alleged, “I have told the DGP several times that two DSPs in our district are directly involved with gangsters. So far, no action has been taken. They can even take action against me and say I am making false allegations. I will provide the evidence. I have conference calls related to extortion on my mobile phone”