Military Digest | 40 years of Operation Black Thunder I in Golden Temple

Also, unlike Operation Blue Star, there was no direct involvement of the Army in Black Thunder 1. However, two Army officers, Maj Gen Naresh Kumar and Maj Gen P C Mankotia, were leading the National Security Guard teams that took part in the operation.

A former IAS officer of Punjab, Ramesh Inder Singh, has revealed many details about the operation since he was serving as the deputy commissioner of Amritsar in those fateful days. He writes in his book, Turmoil in Punjab, that the declaration of Khalistan and a press conference held by the Panthic Committee had alarmed the political leadership, as a result of which the intervening night of April 29 and 30 saw Chief Minister Surjit Singh Barnala, Union Minister of State for Defence Arun Singh, NDG Director-General R T Nagrani, Congress vice-president Arjun Singh and DGP J F Ribeiro congregate at Raja Sansi Airport in Amritsar.

This was not the first time Khalistan had been declared. A similar announcement was made on January 12, 1984, by Balbir Singh Sandhu, a self-styled secretary-general of the Council of Khalistan, from Guru Nanak Nivas on the Golden Temple premises. However, the Panthic Committee’s Khalistan announcement took place after a lapse of two years from Operation Blue Star and hence the Government was concerned about its repercussions.

Ramesh Inder Singh states that the high-profile meeting at the airport decided that the police force should be sent inside the Golden Temple precincts to nab the militants.

However, Amritsar SSP S S Virk asked for 48 hours to mobilise the requisite state police and central armed police force. It was eventually decided that it would be an NSG-police operation, even as the Punjab chief minister stipulated that there should be no entry inside the sanctum sanctorum or any firing towards it.

The eventual operation involved not only clearing the militants from Golden Temple precincts but also from Gurdwara Baba Deep Singh in Amritsar, and a historical gurdwara in Tarn Taran.

On April 30, 1986, the transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) flew 14 sorties to Amritsar, bringing in CAPF jawans and NSG commandos. Around 300 NSG commandos took part in the operation, while IAF also ferried nearly 1,200 CAPF personnel to Amritsar.

Ramesh Inder Singh says the role of NSG was well defined. They were tasked to flush out militants from the main Golden Temple complex, which included the langar hall, Manji Sahib Diwan Hall, Ramgarhia Bunga, Parikrama of the Golden Temple, and the Akal Takht Sahib. They were also to clear out Gurdwara Baba Deep Singh and buildings of the Sarai Complex—including Guru Ram Das Sarai, Guru Nanak Niwas, and Teja Singh Samundri Hall—as well as the gurdwara at Tarn Taran.

An NSG control room was set up on the rooftop of the Brahm Buta Akhara, where the two NSG major generals, the Punjab DGP, IG Operations D S Mangat, Jalandhar DIG P C Dogra, CRPF DIG C Paul, Amritsar SSP, and the Amritsar deputy commissioner were stationed.

A curfew was imposed in Amritsar on April 30 at 3 pm, and a preliminary operation to clear surrounding buildings began at 5 pm.

Announcements were made for pilgrims inside the Golden Temple to exit, and around 100 of them came out of the precincts.

An argument just before the operation

Before the NSG was to enter the Golden Temple Complex near midnight, an argument broke out between the NSG major generals and the civilian/police officials over expected firing from rooftops and whether NSG personnel should fire back at the Harmandir Sahib.

Ramesh Inder Singh says Army officers snapped back that their troops were not statues and if fired upon, they would fire back. Singh, as the Amritsar deputy commissioner, retorted that he was withdrawing the state government’s NSG requisition. “You pack up and go back from where you all came,” he quotes himself as saying in his book.

Ultimately, the chief minister endorsed this line of action, and the operation finally started in earnest close to midnight.

The NSG completed its operation inside the temple complex by 1.30 am on May 1, but militants holed up in the sanctum sanctorum had not come out, and the Army officers told the civilian officials that the responsibility to get them to vacate it fell on them, not the NSG.

Eventually, fervent appeals by Ramesh Inder Singh and S S Virk, who ventured onto the Parikrama at considerable risk to their safety and made announcements on loudspeakers, worked. After several hours, those holed up inside yielded in the early hours of May 1.

“The operation netted 55 persons of various hues of extremism,” writes Ramesh Inder Singh. However, as events were to prove, a much bigger Operation Black Thunder II was destined to be held two years later in May 1988, which proved to be a much harder task than the first version.