On Tuesday, May 5, night, a low-intensity explosion near the boundary wall of the Army cantonment on Khasa Road in Amritsar briefly disturbed the calm around one of Punjab’s most sensitive military zones. Hours earlier, in Jalandhar, another blast outside the headquarters of the Border Security Force’s Punjab Frontier set a parked scooter ablaze and triggered alarm in the area.

The incidents were limited in scale. No major casualties were reported. Yet the blasts quickly acquired a wider political and symbolic meaning. Punjab Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav said preliminary investigations pointed to possible cross-border involvement and the suspected use of improvised explosive devices, though the State government later said the probe was still at an early stage and no definitive attribution had been made. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, meanwhile, accused the BJP of seeking to manufacture fear ahead of the 2027 Assembly election through what he described as “small blasts”. The BJP rejected the charge and accused the AAP government of deflecting attention from a deteriorating law and order situation. The exchange was politically charged, but also revealing.

In Punjab, even low-intensity violence rapidly becomes entangled in competing claims about national security, governance failure, cross-border interference and historical memory. That sensitivity is rooted in the State’s recent history. It is also being sharpened by a discernible series of incidents over the last three years—grenade attacks, crude bombs, railway explosions, and weapons recoveries that security agencies say form part of a broader ecosystem of disruption.

A pattern taking shape

In late April, an explosion on a railway track near Shambhu in Patiala district killed one man, disrupted freight movement and led to several arrests. Investigators later said the blast appeared to have resulted from a botched attempt to sabotage the Ambala-Amritsar freight corridor near Bothonia village. The suspected operative, Jagroop Singh, 35, of Tarn Taran district, was killed when the improvised explosive device he was allegedly handling detonated prematurely.

Patiala police said they had uncovered a Pakistan-backed module linked to pro-Khalistan elements and dismantled it within hours of the incident. Subsequent raids led to the arrest of four men: Pardeep Singh Khalsa, Kulwinder Singh, Satnam Singh, and Gurpreet Singh, all of whom, officials said, had prior criminal records. Investigators identified Khalsa as the alleged kingpin and said he maintained contact with handlers based in Pakistan and Malaysia while coordinating logistics on the ground. Police recovered a hand grenade, two pistols, ammunition, and communication equipment. Germany-based pro-Khalistan operative Jaswinder Singh Multani later claimed responsibility for the incident on social media; police have not independently verified the claim.

The Shambhu case and the recent low-intensity blasts in Amritsar and Jalandhar do not appear isolated. Earlier this year, a grenade attack on a police station at Bhindi Saida in Amritsar Rural on the night of March 29-30 was followed within days by a grenade lobbed at the Punjab BJP headquarters in Sector 37, Chandigarh, on April 1. Neither caused major casualties. Both carried a message.

Over the past two to three years, Punjab and neighbouring Chandigarh have witnessed a series of incidents involving crude explosive devices, grenade attacks and threats targeting police establishments and public spaces.

In December 2024, a grenade attack at the Ghanie Ke Bangar police station in Batala, Gurdaspur district, was later attributed by the National Investigation Agency to Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) operatives, with the agency chargesheeting seven accused. In May 2025, a more powerful explosion in Naushera village under Kambo police station in Amritsar Rural killed a man whom police said was retrieving an explosive consignment for the BKI. In May 2023, three explosions occurred between May 6 and May 11 along the heritage street leading to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, one of the country’s most sensitive religious sites. The devices caused limited injuries, but the symbolism was unmistakable: a sacred and heavily policed space had been breached.

Security agencies say the objective is not mass casualties but the steady production of uncertainty, and the perception that even sensitive spaces remain vulnerable. Alongside these incidents runs a quieter but more consequential thread: the continuing recovery of explosives, weapons, and improvised devices across Punjab. State police have reported multiple seizures of royal demolition eXplosive RDX-laden Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and remotely triggered explosives, many of them, officials said, smuggled across the border using drones.

The scale and sophistication of these networks became clearer on April 29, when the Delhi Police Special Cell said it had dismantled an international arms-smuggling module that used the Punjab border as a key entry route. Investigators alleged links to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and said the network relied on drones as well as routes through Nepal to move weapons into India. A cache of 23 advanced firearms, including Zigana and Glock pistols, along with 92 cartridges, was seized; nine people were arrested. Officials said Punjab is emerging not merely as a frontier vulnerable to infiltration but as a transit and distribution corridor feeding criminal networks across north India.

Cases involving narcotics, weapons and cross-border logistics are increasingly intersecting. On May 6, Sri Ganganagar police in Rajasthan arrested two men from Punjab’s Fazilka district, Kulwinder Singh and Robin Singh, with heroin, opium, pistols, and ammunition during an operation along National Highway 911 near the Punjab border. Investigators said the consignment had been delivered through a satellite-controlled drone and linked the accused to a Pakistan-based crime syndicate handler. Security officials said such cases blur the distinction between organised crime, smuggling networks and politically sensitive security threats.

Crime, ideology, and digital radicalisation

Security agencies have linked many of these incidents to cross-border networks involving Pakistan-based handlers, diaspora-linked operatives, and local recruits. But unlike the insurgency of the 1980s and 1990s, there is no singular ideological centre or mass mobilisation. What has emerged instead is a decentralised ecosystem in which criminality, political symbolism, and transnational influence overlap.

Recent investigations point to a recurring pattern. Local operatives, often with criminal backgrounds, are loosely attached to ideological narratives and guided remotely by handlers abroad. Young recruits are drawn into operations that require limited training but carry symbolic value: throwing a grenade, planting a crude device or transporting weapons.

Parallel to these physical networks runs an expanding digital ecosystem. Security officials and independent researchers point to the steady circulation of pro-Khalistan narratives on social media, much of it produced outside India but consumed locally. The content ranges from historical grievance to the symbolic glorification of militant figures, framed through the language of identity, injustice, and memory.

Some analysts describe this as a form of ambient radicalisation. Others caution against simplistic causal links between online rhetoric and acts of violence. Yet there is broad agreement that the digital amplification of grievance has become a force multiplier, particularly among sections of the youth navigating unemployment, debt, migration pressures, and social uncertainty.

The concern has acquired an international dimension. In February, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval visited Ottawa and held talks with his Canadian counterpart, Nathalie Drouin, that included cooperation on intelligence-sharing relating to extremism, organised crime, and transnational networks—a recognition that the ecosystems sustaining low-intensity militancy now extend across borders, diaspora hubs, and digital platforms.

The shadow of history

To understand why relatively small incidents generate disproportionate concern in Punjab, it helps to recall what the State has lived through. From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, Punjab was engulfed in a violent insurgency and prolonged bloodshed. Its sensitivity to even limited violence is rooted in the traumatic memory of those years—Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the anti-Sikh violence of 1984, and the years of militancy that followed. The insurgency was eventually suppressed, but its memory was never fully resolved.

The 2024 Lok Sabha election had already revealed signs of political volatility. Amritpal Singh won from Khadoor Sahib while incarcerated under the National Security Act, and Sarabjit Singh Khalsa won from Faridkot. Some observers said the outcomes reflected less an ideological shift than a deeper exhaustion with traditional political parties amid economic and agrarian distress.

According to media reports, Jagroop Singh, who was killed in the Patiala railway line blast, had been a supporter and campaigner for Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh.

The current moment is difficult to interpret precisely because multiple strands—security concerns, electoral politics, organised crime, and digital radicalisation—are beginning to intersect.

Punjab is not witnessing a return to the insurgency of the 1980s. There is no broad public support for separatist violence and no mass militant mobilisation. Yet the recurrence of low-intensity blasts, arms recoveries, and cross-border modules points to a fragmented ecosystem in which organised crime, external handlers, and digital radical networks overlap.

Many recent operatives, security officials say, appear driven less by ideology than by money, criminality or local grievances. But these networks remain vulnerable to exploitation by Pakistan-based actors seeking to keep Punjab strategically unsettled at relatively low cost.

The political slugfest between the AAP government and the BJP has further complicated the atmosphere. In a sensitive border State where Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has historically sought to exploit instability and political division, security analysts caution that partisan blame games risk deepening public anxiety and distracting from the institutional coordination the moment requires.

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