KPS Gill

KPS Gill (Kanwar Pal Singh Gill) was the Director General of the Punjab Police who led the state's counterinsurgency against the Kharku movement. He was born in Ludhiana on 29 December 1934 and joined the Indian Police Service in 1958 in the Assam-Meghalaya cadre. He headed the Punjab Police from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1991 until he retired on 31 December 1995.

The state's view. The Indian state and many commentators remember him as the "supercop" who ended the armed movement. He led Operation Black Thunder in May 1988, in which security forces cleared the Golden Temple complex; supporters contrast it with the Army's Operation Blue Star four years earlier. They also credit him with creating the conditions for the 1992 Assembly elections. After retiring he headed the Indian Hockey Federation, advised the Gujarat government after 2002 and was consulted by Sri Lanka and Chhattisgarh. In 1996 he was convicted of sexual harassment over an incident at a party in 1988.

The record kept by rights groups. Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf, in their 2007 report Protecting the Killers, describe Gill as police chief "at the height of the abuses." They say he expanded a system of rewards and incentives for police to capture and kill, which they link to more disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon used crematorium records to show over 6,000 secret cremations by the police in Amritsar district; the CBI's own list later covered 2,097 cremations at three Amritsar crematoria. The report says Gill called legal petitions against the police a "litigation gun" and an "instrument of primary attack."

The Khalra case. Khalra was abducted, tortured and killed by Punjab Police in 1995. Six police officials were convicted in 2005; in 2007 the High Court upheld five convictions and raised their sentences to life, and in November 2011 the Supreme Court upheld them. In May 2006 Ensaaf, Human Rights Watch, REDRESS and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice asked the CBI to investigate and prosecute Gill for his alleged part. Human Rights Watch said eyewitness testimony reportedly placed him at Khalra's interrogation shortly before his death and that the CBI had not charged him. No court found against him, and he died in 2017 without facing trial.

Key moments

• 1988: becomes Director General of the Punjab Police; leads Operation Black Thunder in May.
• 1991: returns as Director General.
• 1995: Khalra is abducted and killed; Gill retires on 31 December.
• 10 November 2015: the Sarbat Khalsa at Chabba declares him tankhaiya.
• 26 May 2017: dies in Delhi, aged 82.

The Panth's judgment. On 10 November 2015 the Sarbat Khalsa at Chabba declared Gill and Lt Gen KS Brar, who commanded Operation Blue Star, tankhaiya and told them to appear before Sri Akal Takht Sahib on 30 November. The SGPC president said the gathering had no sanctity, and several bodies stayed away. Gill called the organisers "a bunch of thugs" and said they were the real tankhaiyas.

What he is remembered for. The state honoured the officer who ended the movement; rights groups and many Sikhs remember the chief under whom, in Human Rights Watch's words, "the vast majority" of disappearances remain unresolved. Both memories rest on the same years, 1988 to 1995.