GOVERNOR-GENERAL SIMON, UPHOLD THE LAW

It was Punjab's Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, who as DGP ensured that the police got over their fear of the K Group (a much more apt name for them than what they call themselves, Khalistanis) and ensured that Punjab returned to the tranquillity that the people wanted.

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By the close of the 1980s, the state was in the process of being torn apart by groups funded, trained and equipped from across the border. Every year saw an uptick in killings and a rise in fear, so much so that witnesses to atrocities committed by K Group were too terrified to testify against the few who were prosecuted. All that changed in subsequent years. In 1991, Gill was appointed the DGP and by 1995, when he retired from service, fear of the K Group within the local populace had all but vanished in the state. Given the memories of the horrors that were committed on the people of Punjab by the K Group since the 1980s, it is small wonder that the K Group adherents living in Canada and in a few other countries who came to India subsequently failed to mobilise enthusiasm amongst the people of the Punjab for a fresh round of terror and violence. Aware of such activity by a small section of overseas visitors from what ought to have been friendly democracies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ensur