Jathedar Sukhdev Singh Babbar

Sukhdev Singh Babbar was the Jathedar of the Babbar Khalsa and the best known of its leaders inside Punjab. Sikh accounts call him a Shaheed and remember him simply as the Jathedar. The Tribune, writing in 2001, called him chief of Babbar Khalsa International. He was killed on 9 August 1992, and the police account and the Sikh account of his death differ.

Who he was. The 1984 Tribute website, which gives the Sikh account, says he was born on 9 August 1955 at Dassuwal near Amritsar, studied up to class 8 and worked the family land with his brothers. It says he took amrit in 1977 at an Akhand Kirtani Jatha smagam under the influence of Bhai Fauja Singh. It also says his wedding fell on Vaisakhi, 13 April 1978, the day Nirankari guards fired on the Sikh march at Amritsar.

Key moments

• After 1978: ThePrint calls the Babbar Khalsa an offshoot of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha. The 1984 Tribute account says a meeting of young Singhs in 1981 announced a separate underground body, the Babbar Khalsa, and chose him as its Jathedar, with Anokh Singh, Sulakhan Singh and Wadhawa Singh as deputies. Sources do not agree on one founding date.
• 1980: the head of the Sant Nirankari Mission, Baba Gurbachan Singh, was shot dead in Delhi. The same Sikh account describes this as a Babbar Khalsa plan carried out by Bhai Ranjit Singh. ThePrint reports that Ranjit Singh was convicted of the murder and later became Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht Sahib.
• June 1984: the Sikh account says he was in the Darbar Sahib complex during Operation Blue Star with about 90 Babbar Khalsa Singhs under General Shahbeg Singh's command, held a position at Baba Atal Sahib, and left the complex only when the Panj Singhs ordered him to.
• 9 August 1992: he was killed. First Information Report 63 of that date at Sahnewal police station says a police party under Ludhiana's SP (Detective), BS Gill, challenged a car at the Dharaur culvert near Nandpur at 5 am; two Sikhs got out and opened fire; one was found dead with an AK-47; the other escaped.
• The International Human Rights Organization appointed a four-member team to investigate. Its findings, posted on Panthic.org in 2007, say he had been living in Patiala under another name, was seized at his house on the night of 8 August, was tortured at Ludhiana and was shot in his car at about 5 am on 9 August, and that the encounter story was made up for rewards and promotions. These are that organisation's findings, not a court's.

What he is remembered for. The 1984 Tribute account says he read a novel about the Babbar Akali movement of the 1920s and saw it as a model for organising the youth of his time, and that the new body took its name from it. Sikh accounts rank him among the senior Kharku leaders of 1978 to 1992. The Tribune wrote in 2001 that his name had spread fear among the people and the police in the 1980s.