40 years ago September 11, 1986: Punjab Police nab 13 terrorists

This is the front page of The Indian Express published on September 11, 1986.

2 min readSep 11, 2026 06:40 AM IST First published on: Sep 11, 2026 at 06:40 AM IST

Thirteen of the 20-member gang of the dreaded terrorist Avtar Singh Brahma have been arrested, the police claimed in Jalandhar. P C Dogra, DIG, Jalandhar range, told newsmen that the gang was responsible for killing four persons at Chola Sahib in Sarhali in Amritsar district on August 31.

Interrogating Vaidya ‘assassins’

The CBI director-general, Mohan Katre, flew to Pune to supervise the interrogation of Sukhdeo Singh and Nirmal Singh, arrested in connection with Gen A S Vaidya’s killing. He is likely to stay for a day or two to guide the investigations in the wake of the breakthrough made possible by the two arrests.

Court releases Badal, Tohra

The president of the breakaway faction of the Akali Dal(L), Parkash Singh Badal, and the former president of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, were released by additional chief metropolitan magistrate V K Malhotra after a month’s detention in Tihar jail. They were detained after refusing to comply with the orders of the Delhi police commissioner asking them to leave the Capital.

‘Indira loyalists’ meet President

Prakash Mehrotra, former Assam governor and member of the steering committee of the ‘Indira Loyalists’, has alleged that pressure was brought to bear on President Zail Singh not to meet with a delegation of his party. Mehrotra said that in spite of this, he met with the President, who agreed to accept a memorandum from the ‘Indira Loyalists’.