The man who played by his own rules
: He inspired awe and revulsion, simultaneously. Super cop KPS Gill, who was credited with crushing militancy in Punjab, is no more.
A 1958-batch IPS officer of Assam cadre, Gill was moved to Punjab as head of the state police when Khalistan movement was at its peak. He served as state police chief initially from 1988 to 1990 and then from 1991 till his retirement in 1995.
For a section of society, DGP Gill was a symbol of fear and for another a hero. A saviour for the terrorist-hit and a reason for revulsion for those active in the ‘movement’, Gill earned the sobriquet of ‘super cop’ for rooting out militancy in Punjab.
Immediately after he was moved to Punjab, he led Operation Black Thunder in May 1988 to flush out terrorists from the Golden Temple.
Known to be a decisive and strong-willed person, Gill played by his own rules and stood by his men who performed in the field, fighting militancy.
“He made police a proactive force and despite a tough battle (against militancy), the motivation among the cops under him was at the peak. Under him, we were a united force. He bought armoury and vehicles to fight terrorists,” said a former police officer, who had worked with Gill and retired from a senior position. Awarded Padma Shri in 1989 , he was also blamed by certain quarters for extra-judicial killings and disappearance of human rights activists Jaswant Singh Khalra, who researched on mass burial of several unidentified people during the era of terrorism. Among radicals, he was seen as a towering symbol of instrument of policing.
Author and journalist Khushwant Singh, however, supported Gill’s use of extra-judicial measures to “stamp out terrorism” as, he said in a book review, the judicial system was in a state of collapse, with judges being too frightened to rule against the “terrorists.”
Gill was convicted in 1996 for outraging the modesty of a woman IAS officer, Rupan Deol Bajaj. He remained president of Indian Hockey Federation for 14 years till 2008.
Gill was appointed as a security adviser by the Sri Lankan government in 200 while it was fighting LTTE insurgents. In 2006, he worked as adviser for the Chattishgarh government to fight naxals. In his book ‘The knights of falsehood’, Gill wrote in the opening para, “The terrorism (in Punjab) was fuelled by deliberate distortion of message of Sikhism by the Sikh leadership, who seized control of the shrine as final arbiter of the faith, contrary to the message of the Gurus”. The knight is dead.