Baba Gurbachan Singh assassinated

Who: Baba Gurbachan Singh, head of the Sant Nirankari Mission, and Ranjit Singh, who ThePrint says was a member of the Baba Deep Singh Ranjit Akhara in Delhi and a carpenter, and had entered the mission as a sewadar. Ranjit Singh was convicted of the murder and later became Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht Sahib.

What: On 24 April 1980 Gurbachan Singh was shot dead as he was getting out of his car on his return from a congregation (ThePrint). The Tribune places the killing in Delhi and names the killer as Ranjit Singh of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha. It came less than four months after the sessions judge at Karnal set free the 64 Nirankaris accused of the Amritsar killings of 13 April 1978, in which at least 17 people died, most of them Sikhs.

Ramachandra Guha writes that it was widely believed that Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was behind the killing, but that no action was taken. That is Guha's report of a belief, and no court said so. ThePrint calls the Babbar Khalsa an offshoot of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha, but none of the sources we opened links the Babbar Khalsa to this killing, so the page does not.

Where: Delhi.

Why it mattered: It came in the middle of a conflict between the Sikh bodies and the Nirankaris that had begun with the SGPC's warning of 28 November 1973 and the Akal Takht's hukamnama, after the 1978 clash, to sever ties with the Nirankaris. The Tribune says that after the killing the Nirankaris had virtually withdrawn from Punjab, and that in the early 1980s there were incidents in which supporters of Khalistan killed Nirankaris.

The sources we opened do not say what sentence Ranjit Singh received or when he was convicted.