Amritsar Police Commissioner Transfer: Punjab Denies Jantar Mantar Link, Then Moves Bhullar

Amritsar Police Commissioner Transfer: A day after Punjab’s government cleared Jantar Mantar protesters of any terror-module link, Amritsar CP Gurpreet Singh Bhullar was abruptly transferred — with no official reason given.

North Desk Correspondent

Chandigarh, August 7

The Punjab government spent Thursday publicly insisting that nine men arrested in an alleged ISI-backed terror plot had nothing to do with the protesters at Jantar Mantar. By Friday evening, the officer who made the original statement was no longer Commissioner of Police, Amritsar.

The government says the two events are unconnected. It has offered no other explanation for the timing.

What Bhullar actually said

On August 4, Commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar briefed reporters on a significant breakthrough: the Amritsar Commissionerate had busted an alleged Pakistan-backed terror module, arresting nine people — including four juveniles — and recovering three pistols, nine live rounds and four petrol bombs. According to the police version of events, some of those arrested had visited Jantar Mantar in Delhi, carried out reconnaissance, and planned to target protesters there with the petrol bombs they’d been caught with.

That is a materially different claim from saying the arrested men were protesters, or that the protest itself had any terror links. But on platforms including on Instagram, edited clips of the briefing began circulating with captions and visuals that collapsed the distinction — implying the ISI-linked module and the Jantar Mantar protest were one and the same.

The government’s clarification

Amritsar Police Commissioner Transfer: On August 6, Punjab’s Information and Public Relations Department issued a pointed rebuttal. Its statement, carried under the Punjab Police spokesperson’s name, said the audio and factual content of Bhullar’s briefing had not been altered — but that selective trimming, changed background visuals and misleading captions had created a false impression.

The department was explicit: no arrested person was said to have participated in the protests, and no protester was linked to the module. It added that legal action under the Information Technology Act was being initiated against those responsible for the edited posts.

It was, in effect, a full-throated defence of the Jantar Mantar protesters’ reputation — asserting clearly, on the record, that they had no connection to a Pakistan-backed terror plot.

The Amritsar Police Commissioner Transfer

Less than 24 hours later, Bhullar was shifted out. He has been asked to report to the office of the Director General of Police in Chandigarh; DIG Border Range Harmanbir Singh Gill has taken additional charge of the Amritsar post. No order or statement from the government has cited a reason. Officials have not said whether the move is a routine reshuffle or tied to the controversy over how his briefing was portrayed online — and North Desk has found no on-record confirmation either way as of this writing.

That silence is itself notable. The state was willing to name names, cite specific URLs and threaten IT Act action to protect the protesters’ image within 48 hours of the edited clips surfacing. It has said nothing at all — not a line — to explain, defend or contextualise the sudden removal of the officer whose unaltered statement started the row.

The political reading

Amritsar Police Commissioner Transfer: The opposition has filled that silence quickly. Former Union minister Ravneet Singh Bittu, reacting on X, suggested Bhullar’s disclosures about the alleged Jantar Mantar plot may have proven inconvenient for AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, and questioned whether that discomfort explained the timing of the transfer.

That is a charge, not an established fact — the government has made no such admission — but it is the reading gaining traction precisely because Punjab has left a vacuum where an explanation should be.

Not Bhullar’s first abrupt exit

Amritsar Police Commissioner Transfer: This is not the first time Bhullar has been moved out of the Amritsar CP post without stated cause. He was similarly shifted once before and later reinstated to the same position. Whether this fits a broader pattern of frequent, opaque changes at the top of Amritsar policing is a separate question — but it is the backdrop against which this latest transfer is being read.

Punjab’s government has been unambiguous about protecting one reputation this week — the protesters’, from an inference it says was manufactured by selective editing. It has said nothing at all about the reputation, or the reasoning, involved in removing the commissioner who made the underlying statement. Until the government explains that gap, the timeline will keep doing the talking it hasn’t.

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