Grenade attacks put the spotlight back on Punjab

All is not well in the North Indian state of Punjab. In the past seven months there have been as many as 16 incidents of grenade lobbying targeting police installations, places of worship and prominent individuals. The most serious episode occurred on the intervening night of April 7 when a grenade blast took place at the residence of former Punjab cabinet minister Manoranjan Kalia in the heart of Jalandhar city. Kalia is also a past BJP president in the state.

The senior leader tells me that he was woken up by a deafening tremor and a blast that was heard across the city. Police reached the site only after it was informed by Kalia’s office. Incidentally, the house where the attack took place is just one lane removed from a police station and the blast was heard across town. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has now taken over the investigation and the ‘prime accused’ has been taken into custody from Delhi.

The arrests, however, are believed to be the tip of the iceberg and part of a much larger conspiracy. Are these attempts to destabilise Punjab and take it back into the past? Three days after the attack at Kalia’s home, a grenade was lobbed at the house of a popular YouTuber. Fortunately, at least for now there have been no casualties and the motive seems to be to build not just fear but also communal divide, once again.

Law and order in the state has increasingly become a serious cause for concern in Punjab, a border state that was gripped by terrorism in the 1980s with violence spilling into the first half of the 90s. While Punjab Police is credited with being perhaps the only force that eradicated violence, recent events reflect an undercurrent of unease. Those watching closely question why there is no letting up in these attacks. What is the government and the police doing to stop the recurrence of grenade lobbying, something far serious than petty crime? 

The Aam Aadmi Party’s victory in Punjab in 2022 had its cynics, who felt the party was too inexperienced to cope with this sensitive state, and the enticement of freebies were not enough to rule Punjab whose challenges are unlike that of most states. Unfortunately, they are being proved right.

Soon after Bhagwant Mann came to power as the Chief Minister, AAP faced its first test when a sword wielding militia of hundreds led by separatist Amritpal Singh stormed a police station. Singh, a self-styled radical preacher who painstakingly cultivated an image as a new-age Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the dreaded terrorist responsible for mass killings and terror in the state in the past, was finally arrested.

But in an indication of how the winds are changing direction, Amritpal Singh won an election from jail and is now a member of Parliament. If that was not troublesome enough, there is more to chew on. He was elected by the highest margin of any candidate in Punjab and won by a whopping 193,000 votes. This despite fighting the elections behind bars in far away Assam where he is being held under the National Security Act (NSA).

Amritpal is one of two hardliners who won in the polls, the other being Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa. Khalsa’s father Beant Singh assassinated former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Gangster Happy Passia alias Harpreet Singh has been detained by the FBI in the United States. He openly challenged the Punjab police multiple times and is suspected to be the ‘mastermind’ of the wave of grenade violence. On X, FBI called him an ‘alleged terrorist responsible for terror attacks in Punjab, India’. Passia was also wanted for the September 2024 grenade attack at a house in Chandigarh that belonged to a former senior police official.

While armed robberies at places like petrol pumps have become common place, it is names of gangs like Lawrence Bishnoi alongside handles of banned terror outfits from Punjab’s troubled years like Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and the Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF) in the mix that are sending worrying signals. While Bishnoi is in a jail in Gujarat, it is believed that operations are also being managed from outside the country.

As per preliminary investigations, the grenade attack in Jalandhar was the handiwork among others, of a close associate of Bishnoi. The reason behind the attack on a BJP leader’s house seems to be the same as a grenade hurled at a temple in Amritsar last month, an attempt to disrupt communal accord.

Reports say disgruntled youth without any criminal background are used as local operatives for these terror operations. Punjab has been struggling with unemployment, drugs and a steady outflow of young men to foreign countries like Canada, America, UK and Australia. In their desperation to leave, many locals take the ‘Donkey’ route or illegal immigration which is not only dangerous but has also seen at least two plane full of men sent back in handcuffs and chains by Trump.

The recent surge of upheaval in the state is setting off alarm bells. Who wins if there is disharmony in the state? As events in Punjab become murkier, all eyes are on the AAP government that is under attack from the opposition. After losing its citadel of Delhi, it is left only with Punjab where it is in power. The last two years before elections will not be an easy ride. An ambitious Arvind Kejriwal wants a hand in the Punjab pie but that alone is not enough to win the next election. Punjab will extract every last ounce as it promised.