Surjit Singh Penta

Surjit Singh Penta was a young Sikh, a promising athlete who became a militant. He was expected of being responsible for, or involved in, over 40 deaths. He apparently took his own life wishing to die as the Great Sikh Martyr Baba Deep Singh ji had done at the edge of the Sarovar that surrounds the Harmandir Sahib.

He joined the Khalistan movement, after he had been personally affected by the Delhi Anti-Sikh riots in 1984. After that he became part of the Bhindranwala Tigers Force of Khalistan.

He is said to have tracked down and personally punished some of the goons who were resposible for the deaths of innocent men, women and children after the assasination of Indira Gandhi. Whose death became nothing more than an excuse to rob, kill, rape and loot while the police looked the other way.

One elder Singhni, her name is not known, was caught with her husband, son and his two sons (about 5 to 7 years of age). While she held on to her grandchildren her husband and son were doused with fuel and burned alive before her eyes. The rioters tauntingly told her they would spare her grandsons, if she herself would cut the hair of the boys. But that great lady refused to do it. Her grandsons too were then thrown into the fire as well. The brave Singhni remained unmoved.

Then the ringleader of the mob said:

"Give that poor lady a 1,000 rupees, she has just lost everything." He then started laughing.

The brave Singhni replied:

"Your turn will come soon".

After that she was cut into pieces.

It is said that the Singhni's prediction came true, for Surjit Singh Penta tracked down and killed that ringleader and some of his goons.

There are three versions of his death.

• One tells us that Surjit Singh Penta was martyred during Operation Black Thunder. He died after biting a capsule of cyanide, which had been hidden in a ring, after he noticed that some police officers who had just recognized him were headed his way.

• The second recounts that he was caught in Operation Black Thunder and martyred later in a 'staged' police encounter.

• The third is attested in the following account from a man who claims to have witnessed his death. [1] by an eye-witness Tarun J. Tejpal, a renowned Indian journalist and Editor in Chief, of Tehelka.com.

"I was among several who saw him die. His name was Surjit Singh Penta, and the year was 1988. A smartly calibrated siege of the Golden Temple had just ended in the surrender of all the militants holed up inside the Harmandir Sahib, the Temple’s sanctum sanctorum. As they filed out and squatted in the courtyard of the serai on the Temple’s periphery, a sudden commotion broke out. The police spotters had recognised a major militant. But before they could lay hands on him, he had swallowed his cyanide pill, and though the police threw him into a jeep to rush him to hospital, he was dead. Penta’s story deserves telling because it illustrates the pathology of oppression. The young Sikh was a national-level athlete representing Delhi before he became a witness to the brutal Sikh massacres of 1984. By the time he committed suicide a few years later more than 40 killings were attributed to him.

Before he became a terrorist Penta had been terrorised by the state — or its malign absence".