Thread by @WokeJanta

May 1988, Operation Black Thunder II

The spectacular success of Op BT in Amritsar cleared the Golden Temple complex of terrorists. It also gave the Govt a golden opportunity to take fresh initiatives on the festering crisis in PB

Militants killed: 41
Surrendered: 200+

On that quiet, yet eventful, evening in Amritsar, many myths and reputations lay shattered and just a few redeemed. Only a few days earlier, Malkiat Singh Ajnala, the self-styled Lt-general of the Khalistan Commando Force had threatened to kill thousands of troops

before one could enter the temple: "Tell Ribeiro to hire trucks to pick his men's bodies. There will be thousands," he had boasted.

Now he meekly watched a government doctor stitch his bleeding shoulder. Hiding his face from cameras was Nirwair Singh, spokesman of the

secessionist Panthic Committee. And on the parikrama lay the massive body of "Lt-general" Karaj Singh Thande who, true to his word of never falling in police hands alive, had swallowed cyanide.

But even his desperate act, as that of at least 3 others including the well-known

terrorist Surjit Singh Penta, could not lighten the intensity of the blow, tactical and psychological, that Operation Black Thunder-II had delivered to terrorism in Punjab. In contrast to the messy Operation Bluestar of June 1984 which left 1,000 dead inside the temple,

including 150 armymen, this op was relatively bloodless: 41 were killed by the security forces who lost none of their own.
There was an unbearable stink. Stink from the bodies that lay on the parikrama, stink of rotting food and stink of the indiscretions of the 46 men and

one woman who had holed up in the Golden Temple's sanctum sanctorum for more than 72 hours, filling the vessels inside with excreta and subjecting it to the kind of desecration not even their staunchest critics had expected from the self-proclaimed defenders of the Sikh faith.

Sikh militants surrender in large number during the Op
Army commander appeals for militants to surrender.

Surrendered militants getting medical treatment.

Post OP Black Thunder (1988), at least 41 bodies including women and children were found buried under debris in Golden Temple.

Several terrorists confessed to torturing and killing people inside GT.

The terrorists were controlled by leaders based in Pakistan 🇵🇰

Khalistanis used utensils in the main sanctum of Golden Temple to urinate and excrete.

Buckets and bowls filled with human excreta were found in the GT.