Happy PhD was discreetly cremated at Babu Sabu Chowk cremation ground at 4pm in the presence of an superintendent-rank police officer and the Station House Officer of the Dera Chahal station.
Published on: Jan 31, 2020, 02:30:42 IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi
Murdered Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) chief Harmeet Singh, nicknamed Happy PhD, appears to have been cremated on Wednesday afternoon in Lahore in presence of fellow extremist Lakhbir Singh Rode, the chief of secessionist International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), according to people familiar with the matter.
Murdered Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) chief Harmeet Singh was cremated in Pakistan. (SikhYouthUK_/ Twitter)
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They added that Happy PhD was discreetly cremated at Babu Sabu Chowk cremation ground at 4pm in the presence of an superintendent-rank police officer and the Station House Officer of the Dera Chahal station.
The pro-Khalistan terrorist was gunned down at Dera Chahal Gurudwara, near Lahore, on January 27 by a local gang over a financial dispute related to drug smuggling. He was involved in over 17 cases of heinous crime, and there was an Interpol Red Corner notice issued against him in 2018. Counterterror operatives who asked not to be named told HT that the body of the extremist was brought from Mayo government hospital in Lahore and cremated in presence of Kulwant Singh, Granthi, Prakash Asthan, Gurudwara Ramdassji, Chunna Mandi, Lahore, Giani Manjit Singh, Granthi, Dera Sahib, Lahore and Azhar Shah, caretaker at the same Dera Sahib gurudwara.
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The pyre was apparently lit by Munir Masih, a helper at the cremation ground. Happy PhD’s parents, who live in Amritsar, were seeking that his body be brought to India for final rites, but HT reported on Thursday that it was unlikely that Pakistan would comply.
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The pyre was apparently lit by Munir Masih, a helper at the cremation ground. Happy PhD’s parents, who live in Amritsar, were seeking that his body be brought to India for final rites, but HT reported on Thursday that it was unlikely that Pakistan would comply.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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