KPS Gill, who stemmed Punjab militancy, dead

New Delhi/ Chandigarh: One of the most well-known police officers, Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, often called “supercop’’ for his role in eliminating militancy from Punjab, died in the capital on Friday afternoon.

The 82-year-old former chief of Punjab Police suffered a cardiac arrest at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital where he was admitted on May 18. Doctors attending to him said Gill was suffering from kidney and heart ailments.  

The iron fist and intelligence with which he tackled militancy is referred to as “The Gill Doctrine” by many scholars.

Gill expert on counter-terrorism
Gill was regarded as one of the best counter-terrorism experts in the country after he virtually wiped out militancy from the border state of Punjab which had witnessed unprecedented incidents of terror during the 1980s and 90s.

Gill served as the DG of Punjab Police in two separate tenures. Gill was also the chief of CRPF, and had also served as inspector general in another sensitive state, Assam, where he was posted for more than 20 years. In his first tenure as head of Punjab Police, the ‘supercop’ led one of the most complex security operations carried out by the forces in May 1988 to flush out militants hiding in the Golden Temple. One of the main successes of Operation Black Thunder, unlike Operation Blue Star, was that there was very little damage was caused to the holy shrine.

The operation was executed with minimum force and yet yielded significant results as 43 militants were killed while 67 others surrendered.

Former officers who worked with Gill during the peak of militancy in Punjab claim that he was known for his out-of-the-box solutions while dealing with problems.