Senior Congress leader and Gurdaspur MP Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa has written to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the escalated targetted killings, extortions and transnational gangster activities in Punjab and sought an urgent high-level meeting of central and state agencies.
The MPs letter to the Home Minister comes on the heels of a demi official letter written to the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla where too he highlighted the deteriorating law and order situation in Punjab.
In his letter to Amit Shah, the MP has asked for a meeting of IB, R&AW, NIA, BSF, Punjab Police, and Punjab Home Department officials so that a coherent and effective national security strategy can be put in place in Punjab without delay.
“I have remained calm in public life, but the events unfolding around us compel me to speak with firmness and a heavy heart. Punjab, particularly in the current calendar year 2025, has witnessed a deeply disturbing rise in targeted killings, assassination attempts, extortion-related murders, gangster warfare, and grenade-type attacks,” wrote Randhawa.
The MP has told the Home Minister that this violence is not sporadic-it is systematic, coordinated, and emboldened. “Most recently, we saw an incident that every local eyewitness and security observer recognises as a grenade attack, yet the Punjab Police has inexplicably and blatantly denied this reality. This refusal to acknowledge the nature of the threat is itself becoming a threat multiplier. The Punjab Government today, I regret to say, is sleeping like Kumbhkaran,” he said.
Randhawa said that despite several sincere officers, the Punjab Police appears either incapable or unwilling to deal with the scale and sophistication of the challenge. Even the Border Security Force, whose jurisdiction now extends up to 50 kilometres from the international border, has not been able to stem the flow of arms, drones, narcotics, and money, he said, adding that cross-border corridors remain active and, in many cases, hyperactive.
“A clearer pattern is emerging: international forces are acting in close coordination….the border belt of Punjab has historically borne the maximum brunt of the Indo-Pak wars, and later, the deep wounds of terrorism in the 1980s and early 1990s. Entire families were wiped out; villages lived under constant siege. We cannot allow this cycle to repeat itself,” he said.
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The MP has annexed a list of targeted killings, gangster-related murders, and terror-linked incidents that occurred only during the calendar year 2025 with his letter. This list does not include routine murders, personal-enmity homicides, or ordinary crime, but only those incidents which display terrorism, targeting, extortion, gang rivalry, or cross-border linkages.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Sukhjinder Randhawa said there are as many as 13 high profile gangsters and their followers are active in Batala police district alone. “Most of them are active in Dera Baba Nanak and Kalanaur area. The police is well aware of them but is doing nothing. These gangsters are Jaggu Bhagwanpuria (Village Bhagwanpuria, Dera Baba Nanak), Nishan Jaurian Kalan (Village Jaurian Kalan, Dera Baba Nanak), Jeevan Fauji (Village Shehzada, Dera Baba Nanak), Shera Mann (Village Mann, Dera Baba Nanak), Sajan (Village Veroke, Dera Baba Nanak), Gopi Goli (Village Kotli Surat Malli), Hassan Shahbad (Batala), Aman (Village Agwan, Kalanaur), Dolly Bal (Village Sathiala), Amarinder Billa (Village Ghumaan), Amrit Dalam (Village Dalam, Qila Lal Singh), Harry Chatha (Village Chatha, Fatehgarh Churian) and Sukh Bhikhariwal (Village Bhikhariwal, Kalanaur),” he said.
