Khalistan Commando Force chief Paramjit Singh Panjwar ‘s killing is the third suspicious killing on Pakistani soil.

Before this Khalistan Liberation Force leader Harmeet Singh aka Happy PhD was killed in 2020 in Lahore.

Last year, Harwinder Singh Rinda died in a Lahore hospital allegedly of a drug overdose though many say that he is alive and that the news of his death was to mislead the Indian government.

Similarly, in May 2013, Sarbjeet Singh who was in a Lahore jail was also killed in the prison premises by fellow inmates.

Mohammad Khalid, a keen watcher of Punjab affairs calls it, ”Use and throw of unwanted men. They are only given undeclared asylum. The state uses them and then discards them as and when they find them to be of no use.”

Sixty-three-year-old Panjwar headed the Khalistan Commando Force-Panjwar faction. Sources say, Panjwar was instrumental in promoting fake Indian currency in India through drug smugglers.

Post-2010 Panjwar ventured into drug smuggling and started living under the alias of Gulzar Singh with the complicity of the state, sources say.

Of late, the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI was planning to revive militancy with the help of Panjwar.

After Panjwar’s death, three other Khalistani leaders— Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale‘s nephew Lakhbir Singh Rode, Wadhawa Singh, and Gajinder Singh are still in Pakistan. Gajinder is accused of hijacking an Indian Airliner to Lahore in 1981 while Rode is chief of the banned ISYF International Sikh Youth Federation and along with Panjwar was complicit in the drug smuggling into Indian Punjab.

Speaking to The Statesman, Panjwar’s elder brother Taran Tarn based Baldev Singh said, “It was our daughter-in-law who was watching the news and first came to know about Paramjit’s killing. “

Reacting to KCF’s alleged role in Gen AS Vaidya’s assassination of which Panjwar was a part, his elder brother Baldev Singh said, ”This is all media creation. I was in the Indian Army and was in the personal security of Gen AS Vaidya for three months in Tezpur. How can one suspect Paramjit of being part of the conspiracy to kill Gen Vaidya.”

He added that “Paramjit Singh Panjwar was a bank employee. But because we were related to Labh Singh (accused of firing bullets at former Punjab DGP Julio Francis Ribeiro and the largest bank loot in Ludhiana) he also came under the police’s scanner and the police started troubling him,” says Baldev. That is when Panjwar made a vanishing act. “Subsequently, our house was brought down and we became shelterless and literally were out on the streets,” he added.

The family did try to convince him to surrender but Paramjit said that now he was at a point of no return, his brother Baldev said.  “Now all that we want is his body so that we could carry out the last rites respectfully as per the Sikh tradition.”

Former Director General of Police (DGP) Punjab Chander Shekhar says, “Probably these men (Harmeet Singh Harvinder Singh Rinda & Paramjit Panjwar) were of no more utility to Pakistan and they were consigned to the bullets. And this had to happen sooner or later…if you live by the gun you die by the gun and that’s what happened yesterday.”