Punjab Police Kill Encounter Suspect in Amritsar; Golden Temple Pilgrim Reunited With Family After Bihar Journey
Amritsar's week moved between grief and warmth: Punjab Police confirmed a Pakistan-based handler had orchestrated the killing of ASI Harjeet Singh as a loyalty test for the narcotics network, and the main accused was shot dead in a Thanda Road encounter. At almost the same time, the city generated a very different story: an elderly pilgrim who separated from his Golden Temple tour group drifted 1,200 kilometres east to Bihar, where a stranger sheltered him and spent three days on ChatGPT to locate his family.
Encounter at Thanda Road: Pakistan-Linked Handler Behind ASI Harjeet Singh Murder
Amritsar Police Commissioner Harmanbir Gill confirmed that the killing of ASI Harjeet Singh was ordered by a Pakistan-based handler as a deliberate loyalty test for recruits to the local narcotics network. Those who carried out the murder were reportedly required to film the act and transmit the video as proof of commitment, giving the case dimensions that extended well beyond a street-level crime into organised cross-border coordination. The main accused was tracked down and killed in an encounter on Thanda Road after exchanging four rounds with Punjab Police, bringing the immediate operational pursuit to a close even as multi-agency investigation into the wider network continued. The ASI's killing had been the second police death in Punjab within a single week, producing immediate calls for a review of officer safety across the state. Commissioner Gill's public statement was calibrated to reassure residents that the primary gunman was no longer a threat while making clear that investigators were mapping the full extent of Pakistan-based involvement. The case placed Amritsar at the centre of an emerging picture of narco-terror coordination in Punjab, a pattern regional security officials had been tracking across several districts in the months preceding the attack. The encounter on Thanda Road was presented as a direct and rapid consequence of the ASI's murder, demonstrating that Punjab Police had both the intelligence and the operational capacity to move quickly against the accused. [4]
🤝 Lost at the Golden Temple, Found in Bihar: A Stranger and ChatGPT Reunite Elderly Pilgrim With Family
Chaman Lal, an elderly resident of Fatehgarh Gujran village in Ludhiana, arrived in Amritsar on September 11 as part of the Punjab government's Mukh Mantri Tirath Yatra scheme, a state-sponsored programme that arranges pilgrimage travel for residents. He visited the Golden Temple but became separated from his group, wandered to Amritsar railway station in a disoriented state, and boarded a long-distance train that carried him more than 1,200 kilometres east to Gaya in Bihar. Lal had struggled with memory-related difficulties, and in Gaya he was found by a local resident named Neeraj, wandering and asking for food. Lal could not recall his home address but retained the name of his village, Fatehgarh Gujran. Neeraj, noting the elderly man was speaking Punjabi, used that single detail to narrow the search to Punjab and spent three days consulting ChatGPT to identify the village and locate Lal's family. Throughout the search, Neeraj took Lal into his home, providing food and shelter across state lines and language barriers. The story, reported by The Siasat Daily on September 20, 2026, circulated widely as an example of spontaneous human decency, with ChatGPT playing an unlikely supporting role in what was otherwise an act of plain generosity extended to a stranger far from home. Lal's family was reunited with him after a four-day search. [6]
Sources: [4] Republic World · [6] The Siasat Daily