DIG Ashwani Kumar

Ashwani Kumar was the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of the Punjab Police for the Jalandhar Division in 1955. Sikh histories name him as the officer who led the police into the Sri Harmandir Sahib complex on the night of 3 and 4 July 1955, at the height of the Punjabi Suba morcha. The SGPC's history of the morcha gives his name as "Mahasha Ashwani Kumar". The Tribune of 1 July 2021, reporting the SGPC's remembrance of the attack, names him as "DIG Mahasha Ashwani Kumar Sharma", and says the attack took place at midnight of 3 and 4 July 1955.

What the SGPC's history says: The history, Punjabi Sube De Morche Di Twarikh (1955), was edited by Karam Singh Zakhmi and revised by Harjinder Singh Dilgeer for the Sikh Ithas Research Board of the SGPC. It says that in the last week of June 1955 he prepared a plan to crush the morcha. It reports it as said that, when he saw Chief Minister Bhim Sen Sachar badly shaken, he boasted that with five days' freedom to act he would crush it, and that he got that freedom (pp. 71 to 72). It says his action began at about midnight on 3 and 4 July with the arrest of the Head Granthi, the Akal Takht Jathedar and others at their homes, and that at three or four in the morning he led thousands of armed police in the main assault (p. 73). It says that, with no regard for the sanctity of Manji Sahib and Darbar Sahib, he ordered the police to continue their violence (p. 77). It says that during the day he said at one time that bricks and stones were being thrown and at another that shots had been fired from inside at the police, though no policeman had a bullet wound; the history calls the firing story false and invented as a pretext (p. 78).

In his introduction Dilgeer writes that the police attacked Darbar Sahib under the leadership of a communalist police officer named Ashwani Kumar, and calls the attack a dress rehearsal for the army attack of June 1984 (p. 6). The history says that on 4 July the police of the Sachar Government, under his leadership, committed beadbi at Manji Sahib and Darbar Sahib (p. 88). These are the SGPC history's words, not a finding of a court or a commission. No account by him or by the Punjab Government was found.

Key moments

• 3 and 4 July 1955: the police action begins at about midnight and the main assault follows at three or four in the morning.
• July 2021: the SGPC marks the attack for the first time, and The Tribune's report of 1 July names him.

What he is remembered for: as the officer in charge of what The Tribune calls the first police action at the Golden Temple in independent India.