Super cop KPS Gill, often credited with rooting out militancy in Punjab, died in a hospital in New Delhi on Friday.  He was 82.  Gill breathed his last at 2:55pm at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

The former director general of police (DGP) of Punjab and Assam was admitted to the hospital on May 18 under the care of Dr DS Rana, head of the department of nephrology.

“He was suffering from end stage kidney failure and significant ischemic heart disease. Gill had been recovering from peritonitis but died of a sudden cardiac arrest caused by cardiac arrhythmia,” Dr Rana said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted after coming to know of Gill’s death: “KPS Gill will be remembered for his service to our nation in the fields of policing and security. [I am] pained by his demise. My condolences.”

Punjab had been in the grips of bloody militancy when Gill had taken over as director general of police (DGP) of the state in 1984. It was his efforts that saw the controlling — if not the end — of one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of the state, which had possibly not seen such turmoil since the Partition that came with India’s Independence since 1984.

His appointment had almost coincided with the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi by her sikh bodyguards Beant Singh and Satwant Singh in 1984. That had resulted in massive anti-Sikh riots in northern India, cases pertaining to which are still being heard in Supreme Court today.

The Khalistan movement, which had received a jolt following the Indian Army raid of the Harmandir Sahib Gurudwara — alternately known as the Golden Temple — in Amritsar, had resurfaced with greater vigour after her death. It was this rising that Gill — who had joined the police force in 1958 — had managed to quell.

He was called a “supercop” as a result of his work from 1984 to 1990. With 1991 turning out to be even more violent as the insurgency peaked, he was chosen as the chief of Punjab Police, and given the aid of Indian Army. By 1993, reports said the masses no longer lived in fear of the insurgency.