Bhai Wassan Singh Zaffarwal

Wassan Singh Zaffarwal was born in 1952 into a poor farming family in Zaffarwal village, Gurdaspur district. He dropped out of school, worked as a class IV employee at Dhariwal Mills, became a baptised Sikh and joined the Damdami Taksal as a follower of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. He was picked up twice for questioning in 1980 (The Tribune, 2001). Open magazine (2009) describes him then as a leader of a cloth mill workers' union and close to Bhindranwale; he says he was at home during the Army action of June 1984, was afterwards detained and tortured twice, and escaped as the Army surrounded his village.

• 1986: he was a member of the original Panthic Committee formed that year, first under Gurbachan Singh Manochahal. The Tribune says he fell out with Manochahal, formed his own Panthic Committee and floated the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF); Open describes his group as Khalistan Commando Force-Zaffarwal. Other accounts name Manbir Singh Chaheru as the KCF's first chief and describe Zaffarwal's group as one of the factions into which it divided after General Labh Singh's death in 1988.
• 29 April 1986: The Tribune says he declared Khalistan from Sri Akal Takht Sahib.
• 1984 to 1988: he visited Pakistan several times and stayed on after the last visit. He told Open: "We were puppets in the hands of the ISI." The Tribune says he coordinated KCF activity from Pakistan and then went to Europe, living in Switzerland from 1995 or 1996.
• 11 April 2001: Majitha police arrested him at the Amritsar bus stand, and the Punjab DGP confirmed it. The Tribune's editorial said it was unclear whether he gave himself up or was spotted and detained. He faced more than a dozen cases including murder and attempted murder and was a proclaimed offender in at least six.
• About 2003: released from jail. Open reports that he was acquitted in cases ranging from sedition to ordering mass killings, mostly for lack of evidence, though it also records that he and his men were accused of hundreds of killings.

After his release he took up homeopathy, which he says he learned in Switzerland, and speaks against drug abuse, dowry and Sikhs cutting their hair. He told Open that the Khalistan movement was forced on the community and not started by anyone.

The Tribune's editorial of 13 April 2001 called him "a faded memory, but a very painful memory" and said that after the 1992 election the movement lost momentum and Pakistan lost interest in men like him. That is the paper's view.