Punjab is once again confronting a familiar but mutated threat. The recent spate of targeted killings and attacks is not random criminal violence, nor merely the residue of old rivalries—it is the visible edge of a calibrated destabilisation strategy that fuses organised crime, separatist extremism, and foreign intelligence sponsorship. What is unfolding is a deliberate attempt to reopen Punjab’s old fault lines through precision terror.

Since 2016, at least 16 targeted attacks resulting in 16 deaths have been recorded in Punjab. The victims cut across religious and ideological lines—RSS and VHP leaders, Shiv Sena functionaries, Dera Sacha Sauda followers, Sikh religious figures, a Christian pastor, and even former militants. From the assassination of Brigadier (Retd.) Jagdish Gagneja in 2016 to the grenade attack on a Nirankari congregation in Amritsar in 2018, and the daylight killing of Shiv Sena (Taksali) leader Sudhir Suri in 2022, the pattern has been consistent: high-visibility violence aimed at maximising fear and polarisation.

Investigations into most of these cases have exposed a persistent transnational backbone—Khalistani terrorist groups operating with support from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The objective is not territorial control but perpetual instability. By selectively targeting Hindu and right-wing figures, religious minorities, controversial preachers, and rival factions, these networks seek to fracture Punjab’s social equilibrium while keeping the Khalistan narrative alive within a narrow but vocal ecosystem.

What distinguishes the current phase is the sophistication of the architecture behind the violence. Recent police operations underscore this shift. On November 20, authorities dismantled an ISI-backed, multi-state gangster-terror module operating across Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, and Rajasthan. Its operatives—some of them non-Sikhs—were tasked by a Pakistan-based handler to execute grenade attacks at sensitive locations to incite communal unrest. Earlier, on November 1–2, arrests of Babbar Khalsa International operatives in Gurdaspur prevented imminent targeted killings. In November alone, security forces disrupted at least seven such modules and seized over 18 weapons.

At the core of this threat is a widening gangster-terror nexus. Local criminals function as shooters and overground workers, while handlers operate safely from Pakistan, Canada, the United States, and parts of Europe. Funding flows through narcotics trafficking, extortion, hawala networks, and digital channels. Ideology provides justification; crime provides manpower; foreign intelligence provides direction. The result is a hybrid destabilisation model that blurs the line between profit-driven violence and strategic terrorism.

This convergence has transformed Punjab’s security environment. The aim is no longer mass insurgency but calibrated disruption—keeping tensions simmering, security forces overstretched, and communal fault lines perpetually exposed. Each killing is designed not only to eliminate a target but to send a message: that Punjab can still be unsettled, that old wounds can be reopened, and that separatist narratives can be sustained through fear.

The challenge, therefore, is structural rather than episodic. Countering it will require sustained intelligence-led policing, aggressive disruption of cross-border funding and arms pipelines, and far stronger international cooperation against diaspora-based facilitators. Anything less risks allowing these hybrid networks to entrench themselves further. Punjab has seen this movie before. The difference today is that the threat wears the mask of crime—but its intent remains unmistakably terror.