Lt Gen Kuldip Singh Brar

Lieutenant General Kuldip Singh Brar (the Tribune also spells it Kuldeep) is the retired Indian Army officer who led the ground assault on Sri Harmandir Sahib and Sri Akal Takht Sahib in June 1984, the Operation Blue Star that the SGPC calls the June 1984 Ghallughara. Born in 1934, he won the Vir Chakra in the 1971 war. In 1984 he was a major general commanding the Army's 9 Division. He is alive. The facts below are sourced and the judgments are attributed.

Key moments

• June 1984: the Tribune reports that he was asked to cancel pending leave and help coordinate Operation Blue Star with Lt Gens Krishnaswamy Sundarji and Ranjit Singh Dayal. On the night of 5 June six infantry battalions and a squad of commandos under his command stormed the complex. It took six days and the use of tanks, and the Akal Takht was damaged. The Tribune notes the operation was controversial because of the casualties and because the Army entered just after Guru Arjan's martyrdom day.
• The toll: the Tribune's 2013 interview with Brar puts the Army's losses at 83 soldiers, including four officers, with 248 wounded. Al Jazeera puts the total dead at an estimated 1,000. Estimates differ widely.
• His defence: the Tribune quotes him as saying he is a Sikh himself, that there was no indiscriminate killing, and that the Army tried to avoid the operation altogether. In a later podcast he argued that Indira Gandhi "allowed" Bhindranwale to grow into a "Frankenstein" and then moved to finish him off when it was too late.
• 30 September 2012: he was attacked with a knife in Old Quebec Street, central London, while walking with his wife, and survived. In July 2013 three people were convicted at Southwark Crown Court and a fourth had pleaded guilty. The Crown Prosecution Service said the group targeted him "in revenge for his actions during his military career". In December 2013 Mandeep Singh Sandhu and Dilbag Singh were sentenced to 14 years, Harjit Kaur to 11 and Barjinder Singh Sangha to 10 years and six months.
• 10 November 2015: the Sarbat Khalsa at Chabba declared him and the former police chief KPS Gill tankhaiya, guilty of religious misconduct, and summoned them before its Akal Takht. The SGPC, the Akal Takht and the Akali Dal rejected the gathering's appointments as the work of "anti-Panthic powers".

He told the Tribune in 2013 that he has not been back to the Golden Temple since 1984 and that he is aware "there is a lot of anger against me". Al Jazeera reports that those connected with the attack on the temple are still the target of ill-feeling from many Sikhs wherever they live. The 2015 declaration shows how part of the Panth holds him to account for the assault that damaged Sri Akal Takht Sahib.