India

KPS Gill: Cop who ‘crushed’ Punjab militancy no more

Srinagar: Kanwar Pal Singh (KPS) Gill, who crushed the militancy in Punjab, is dead.

A recipient of Padma Shri award – India’s fourth-highest civilian honour – in 1989 for his work in the civil service, Gill was born in 1934 in Ludhiana which then came under British India.

He joined the Indian Police Service in 1958. He was assigned to work in Assam and Meghalaya in the northeast India. Gill breathed his last at 2:55 pm at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. He was admitted to the hospital on May 18 under the care of Dr DS Rana, the head of the department of nephrology.

“He was suffering from end stage kidney failure and significant ischemic heart disease. Gill had been recovering from peritonitis but died of a sudden cardiac arrest caused by cardiac arrhythmia,” Dr Rana said.

In 1980s, Gill served as an Inspector General of Police in Assam. He lived in the northeast region of India for at least 28 years before he returned to his home state of Punjab in 1984.

Vinayak Ganapathy, writing for rediff.com in 2003, noted “Gill’s no-nonsense style of functioning, which earned him the sobriquet ‘super cop’ in Punjab, made him unpopular among influential sections of the population” in Assam and called him “a controversial figure”.

He was charged with kicking a demonstrator to death while being the DGP in Assam, however, he was later acquitted by the Delhi High Court.

Credited with crushing the militancy in Punjab – the demand for Khalistan – Gill served twice as the Director General of Police (DGP) of Punjab.

There are accusations that he and the forces under his command were responsible for “grave human rights violations in the name of stamping out terrorism”. The “super cop” was convicted of sexual harassment at a 1988 party.

Gill was currently working as an editor, speaker, consultant on counter-terrorism and President of the Institute for Conflict Management and President of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF).

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