A covert threat looms on law enforcers in Punjab as four Punjab Police officials have been shot dead in cold blood and one left injured in the past six months. With a few of the perpetrators ‘neutralised’ and others arrested, some police officials claim that “handlers based in Pakistan” are behind these attacks, allegedly using an already laid out supply chain and smuggling network.Police sources say that these handlers target local drug addicts and unemployed individuals to carry out the attacks — supplying them with weapons and asking them to record the act — in return for financial gain.The series of killings began on February 22, when Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) Gurnam Singh and Home Guard Ashok Kumar were shot at close range in Gurdaspur — barely a kilometre from the zero line between India and Pakistan. Police were quick to claim the involvement of Pakistan’s ISI, alleging that local men had been recruited and paid to carry out the killing. Three suspects were identified. Two — Dilawar Singh and Inderjit Singh — were arrested. The third, Ranjit Singh, was killed in a police encounter.Only Inderjit Singh had a previous police record. Dilawar and Ranjit — were working in Delhi — were lured by the promise of quick money. Later, police named Sukhjinder Singh, alias Heera — a local businessman — as the financial conduit for the operation, accusing him of routing Rs 8 lakh on the instructions of a handler abroad and charged him under UAPA’s terror-financing provisions.By the time the final chargesheet was filed on June 8, police had reversed course — stating no evidence had been found against him and seeking his discharge — even as internal records reportedly indicated investigators had built a detailed evidentiary trail. The supply of the weapon used in the killing was never explained.Claims by Tehreek-e-TalibanThree months later, on May 24, ASI Joga Singh, a 54-year-old traffic officer with 35 years of service, was intercepted and killed by two motorcycle-borne shooters on the Fatehgarh Churian–Majitha road. No arrest has been made in the case.DGP Gaurav Yadav later claimed that the accused had been identified; however, no information was made public. Two days after Singh was killed, a group calling itself Tehreek-e-Taliban Hindustan (TTH) claimed responsibility and released a video of the killing. The same group also claimed responsibility for the Gurdaspur attack.Story continues below this ad“Being in the police force always carries a risk to life… However, no one expected that a person heading home would be shot down like that. ” said his brother, Prabhjeet Singh.Escape from custodyTTH also took responsibility for the September 11 attack on ASI Jaswant Singh, who was returning to Ajnala on his motorcycle after his duty hours. Near Bhalla Pind, two men on a motorcycle pursued him along a secluded road and opened fire. The bullet pierced his turban and grazed his head, causing an injury.Despite the injury, Singh rode to the Ajnala police station to report the incident. Singh was later admitted to a hospital and was reported to be stable. The accused, Karan, a resident of Jhanjhoti village, was subsequently arrested, but escaped from police custody on Wednesday.According to SSP Amritsar Rural, Kanwalpreet Singh Chahal, Karan escaped when a police team brought him to Majitha to recover weapons linked to the crime. Chahal added that the SHO of Raja Sansi, Gurpreet Singh, had been suspended for the lapse.Story continues below this adThe most recent killing came on September 18, when ASI Harjeet Singh was shot dead in Amritsar’s Dana Mandi area while on night patrol — a posting he had received just a week earlier. Two days later, police said they had “neutralised” a suspect, 20-year-old Deepak Singh, in an encounter after an alleged shootout at a checkpoint; his accomplice escaped.Police said the attackers were promised money and a stake in the local drug trade to kill any available officer — not Harjeet specifically — and that they were to film the killing to be sent to handlers across the border as proof.“The people carrying out these tasks are drug addicts, unemployed youth, or those driven by greed for money,” said ASI Bhupinder Singh, Harjeet’s brother.Not a ‘real organisation’Punjab DGP Gaurav Yadav said that Tehreek-e-Taliban Hindustan is not a real organisation operating in the conventional sense — it’s a brand name, he says, being used by Pakistan-based handlers for attacks carried out by local, disposable recruits.Story continues below this adThose handlers, police sources say, operate through a supply chain originally built for heroin smuggling, now allegedly repurposed for weapons — with a modus operandi designed so that no person in the supply chain can identify the others. A consignment is dropped and hidden by one man; a handler in Pakistan then instructs the executor where to retrieve it. The executor never meets the man who received the weapon. The receiver never meets the shooter. Police cracked the funding module in only one case and later got the accused discharged.