The Cost of Security Theatre: Dissent and State Power in Punjab

India’s latest pre-Independence Day security crackdown has revived an old and politically potent formula: invoke a Pakistan-backed conspiracy, announce sweeping arrests, and allow television studios to turn allegations into verdicts before the evidence reaches a courtroom.

On August 12, Indian security agencies conducted coordinated operations across 14 states against what the government calls the Pakistan-based, ISI-backed Shahzad Bhatti Network. The Ministry of Home Affairs said 253 people were detained, including 44 in Punjab, while more than 200 arrests and 80-plus FIRs have been recorded in cases allegedly linked to the network. Authorities also reported seizures of explosives, firearms and surveillance equipment.

Those allegations deserve serious investigation. So do the government’s claims of cross-border links. But investigation is not the same thing as conviction, and security briefings are not substitutes for transparent evidence tested in court.

The problem is the political context in which such claims are presented. In Punjab, a state with a long and painful history of militancy, counterinsurgency and political alienation, the label “Pakistan-backed” carries enormous rhetorical power. It can transform legitimate questions about civil liberties, federal power or Sikh political aspirations into matters of national security. Once dissent is framed as foreign subversion, the dissenter can be treated not as a citizen exercising political speech but as an enemy within.

That is precisely why the latest arrests deserve scrutiny rather than applause alone.

The government’s announcement came immediately before India’s Independence Day, a period when national-security messaging traditionally receives enormous media attention. Official statements emphasized the alleged Pakistan connection and the thwarting of planned attacks. Reuters reported the government’s claim that more than 200 operatives had been arrested, while noting that Pakistan has historically denied allegations that it supports militant groups blamed for attacks in India.

A responsible international media narrative should therefore distinguish between what Indian authorities allege, what investigators can substantiate, and what courts ultimately establish.

That distinction is particularly important because Punjab carries a historical record of state violence that cannot simply be erased by invoking today’s security threats.

Human-rights organization Ensaaf’s database currently documents at least 5,316 cases of enforced disappearance and extrajudicial execution in Punjab. Its research, conducted through extensive documentation and interviews, describes widespread abuses during the counterinsurgency years and records thousands of cases in which security forces were allegedly implicated.

Ensaaf’s earlier research with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group examined more than 21,000 records and found patterns it argued were inconsistent with the characterization of abuses as merely random or isolated incidents. Its research also documented evidence concerning illegal cremations and alleged falsification of encounter narratives. These are serious historical allegations, and they remain part of Punjab’s unresolved human-rights legacy.

The contemporary picture also warrants attention.

Punjab Police reported 324 encounters with alleged gangsters between April 2022 and November 2025, resulting in 24 deaths and 515 arrests. According to the state’s director general of police, 319 of those arrested sustained bullet injuries.

Then came another 34 reported encounters between November 2025 and January 2026, according to an investigation by The Indian Express. Five people were killed and 45 injured. The newspaper reported that roughly a third of those incidents involved suspects who were already in police custody, raising questions about the circumstances and accountability surrounding police use of force.

These figures do not, by themselves, prove extrajudicial killing. Nor should every police encounter automatically be dismissed as staged. But they establish a legitimate public-interest question: what independent mechanisms exist to determine whether lethal force was lawful?

Punjab’s experience during the farmers’ protests offers another reminder of the human cost of political confrontation. By July 2021, the Punjab government had verified 220 deaths of farmers and agricultural labourers associated with the protest, while farmers’ organizations reported substantially higher numbers. The government had also begun compensating families of those it had verified.

The lesson for international observers should not be that every security operation is fabricated. That would be as careless as accepting every government allegation at face value.

The real lesson is simpler: extraordinary security claims require extraordinary transparency.

If authorities have dismantled a genuine Pakistan-backed terror network, the public deserves to know the evidence through prosecutions, charge sheets, judicial proceedings and independently verifiable facts. If explosives were recovered, courts should establish who possessed them and for what purpose. If individuals are accused of espionage, terrorism or targeted killings, their cases should be tested through due process.

And if some of those arrested are merely political dissidents, activists or citizens whose views are unpopular with the government, that distinction must be made equally clear.

Punjab does not need another cycle in which fear substitutes for evidence and television rhetoric substitutes for accountability. It needs security that protects citizens without criminalizing dissent, and journalism that investigates official claims instead of simply amplifying them.

The Pakistan threat may be real in particular cases. Terrorism is real. Cross-border militancy is a legitimate security concern. But none of those facts grants the state a permanent license to define political disagreement as treason.

For India, and especially for Punjab, the credibility of national security ultimately depends on something more demanding than arrests: evidence, due process and accountability.

Without those safeguards, every new “busted network” risks becoming not merely a security story, but another chapter in Punjab’s long history of distrust between citizens and the state.