33 years ago, during the height of terrorism in Punjab, 19 students were killed by Khalistanis in an engineering college. On November 10, 1989, Khalistani Sikh terrorists attacked one of the most renowned engineering colleges in the country, located in Punjab, and killed 19 students who were sleeping inside a hostel. Everyone on the Thapar Engineering College campus in Patiala, which is 40 miles southwest of Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab, was devastated by the tragedy.
The institution was crowded with several hundred students who had come from all across India to attend a four-day youth festival that started a few days later. The assailants arrived at the campus in a car, managed to pry open the main gate chain, and then made their way to Hostel A, where they held a night watchman at gunpoint until he unlocked the entrance.
The assailants then stealthily entered two rooms that had 24 students and started firing with the Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles they were carrying. NIT Kurukshetra students were staying in one room, and students from Chandra Shekhar Azad Agriculture University in Kanpur were lodged in the adjacent room. Nineteen students died on the spot, and five others were injured and taken to a hospital in Patiala in critical condition.
The majority of the 19 people killed were Hindus. Eight were from the adjacent state of Haryana’s NIT Kurukshetra University, and the rest 11 were from Chandra Shekhar Azad Agriculture University, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh.
The NIT Kurukshetra students killed in the horrific attack were Anil Pandurangi from Goa, Ajay Chaudhury from Uttar Pradesh, Mrinal Bhuyan from Meghalaya, Shailender Chadha from Haryana, R Viswanathan from Tamil Nadu, Anish Choudhury from West Bengal, Ashok Ahlawa from Haryana and Rajan Thakral from Punjab.
The incident happened at 2:30 a.m. on November 11, only hours before Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi arrived in Chandigarh for a short visit. Surprisingly, Gandhi made no public remark about the incident, which killed 19 innocent students.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the insurgency in Punjab led by Khalistani terrorists resulted in the killings of many innocent Hindus who were targeted merely for being Hindus.
Moga Massacre 1989
During the terror regime at that time, Khalistani terrorists opened fire on RSS workers taking part in the daily shakha in Jawahar Lal Nehru Park in Punjab’s Moga district in June 1989, killing 25 Swayamsevaks and injuring 35 RSS members. A large bomb, possibly set by Khalistani terrorists, detonated in the park a short time later, killing a couple and two police officers.
One eyewitness recalled the Khalistani terrorists asking the Swayamsevaks to take down the Sanghi flag they had flown in the Park during the daily Shakha that was being held at the time. The Swayamsevaks would not give in to their demands. Enraged, Khalistani separatists began shooting indiscriminately at RSS Swayamsevaks, resulting in the death of 25.
The infamous “Abohar Goli Kaand” of 1990
Previously, OpIndia reported on Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) terrorists wreaking havoc in Abohar, Punjab. Abohar is a small town in the district of Fazilka, close to the India-Pakistan border. With the purpose of killing everyone, the Khalistani terrorists stormed the town’s trade centre, firing uncounted rounds from their semiautomatic rifles on March 7 1990.
People attempted to flee the market, but the packed route made this impossible. Shopkeepers began locking their doors as promptly as possible, while customers sheltered inside. Those selling items from carts fled to save lives, but many were mortally wounded. According to official records, around 45 people died in the shooting and two bomb blasts, which occurred an hour later at the same spot where rescue operations were in full swing.
It is notable that the concept of Khalistan, a separate religious homeland for Sikhs, which led to all this violence against non-Sikh religious factions, did not emerge spontaneously. It was the inevitable outcome of a number of changes that had transpired within Sikh society.
