Rataul

Rataul is a village in Tarn Taran district, on the Doburji to Kotli road (The Tribune, 16 July 2024). Two events, nearly three centuries apart, make its name known in the Panth.

The village of Bhai Mahan Singh. The Tribune calls Rataul the native village of Shaheed Bhai Mahan Singh. The Muktsar district site and Wikipedia place him among the forty Sikhs, the Chali Mukte, who fought at Khidrana, now Sri Muktsar Sahib, on 29 December 1705. Wikipedia says the forty who had written letters of bedava were led by Maha Singh; the district site says Mai Bhago led the Chali Mukte in the fight. The district site says Mahan Singh was found alive after the battle and asked Guru Gobind Singh to destroy the document disowning him, and that the Guru tore it up before Mahan Singh died.

The killing of Baba Manochahal. Baba Gurbachan Singh Manochahal, head of the Bhindranwale Tiger Force of Khalistan (BTFK), was killed at Rataul in the last days of February 1993. The accounts agree on the village and the month but not on the exact day or on how he died.

• Wikipedia, citing press reports of the time, says he escaped a police dragnet at Bagrian on 27 February, was cornered at Rataul the next day and held off police with a machine gun until he was killed. It quotes the police chief, K. P. S. Gill: "Now I can say that we have finished militancy in Punjab."
• The Damdami Taksal's biography says police raided a farmhouse just outside the village, which it spells Rotal, on 28 February, and that he came out fighting and was shot by police entrenched behind a tubewell.
• Panthic.org, in a series by Bhai Amardeep Singh Amar, says that after the Bagrian raid he went at night to the in-laws' house of a former companion at Rataul, where the women of the house gave him milk mixed with a white powder that it says the police had supplied, and that police then staged an "encounter" and photographed the body. The 1984 Tribute site tells the same story. These are Sikh accounts and the sources opened do not confirm them.

UPI reported on 30 March 1993 that he had been blamed for more than 1,000 killings and described him as a confidant of Bhindranwale. It said Balwinder Singh took over the Tiger Force and was killed in a gun battle near Amritsar on 30 March.

Key moments

• 29 December 1705: Mahan Singh of Rataul dies at Khidrana.
• 27 February 1993: Manochahal escapes a police raid at Bagrian.
• Late February 1993: he is killed at Rataul.
• 30 March 1993: his successor as head of the Tiger Force is killed near Amritsar (UPI).

What it means today. Panthic memory names the village for both. The sources opened do not describe a memorial there.