Top Khalistani leader ‘Happy PhD’ killed near Lahore: Officials

Harmeet Singh, who was also allegedly involved in the murders of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders in Punjab in 2016-2017, was killed at the Dera Chahal gurdwara near Lahore on Monday afternoon.

Updated on: Jan 28, 2020, 08:34:31 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

A top leader of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) has been killed by a local gang in Pakistan over financial disputes stemming from drug smuggling, according to security officials who did not want to be named.

Harmeet Singh was wanted in India in several cases, and involved in the smuggling of weapons and drugs from Pakistan. (Photo: SikhYouthUK_/ Twitter)

Harmeet Singh, who was also allegedly involved in the murders of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders in Punjab in 2016-2017, was killed at the Dera Chahal gurdwara near Lahore on Monday afternoon.

He was wanted in India in several cases, and involved in the smuggling of weapons and drugs from Pakistan.

Officials said he was believed to have assumed the role of KLF chief after the outfit’s head, Harminder Mintoo, was held by Punjab Police from Thailand in 2014. Mintoo, who later escaped from the Nabha jail with a group of gangsters but was detained again, died of cardiac arrest in jail in April 2018.

Singh was a resident of Chheharta in Amritsar and had a doctorate that earned him the alias “PhD”. He was living in Pakistan for two decades.

In October, acting on India’s information, the Interpol issued “red notices” against at least eight Khalistan-linked terrorists based in different countries. Singh, alias “Happy PhD”, was in the list.

Singh, the Pakistan-based KLF handler, plotted to carry out an attack on the anniversary of the Operation Bluestar, which flushed out separatists from inside the Golden Temple in June 1984, according to police intelligence in 2019. The plan was foiled.Singh was also a suspect in the grenade attack on a prayer congregation at the Nirankari Bhawan in Rajasansi that left three persons dead and several injured in 2018.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
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.Read More

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.