The Chief Minister's Office of Punjab announced on Saturday, June 20, 2026, that the state's decisive anti-gangster drive, 'Gangstran Te Vaar', has completed 150 days, with Punjab Police conducting 558 raids at identified and mapped locations linked to associates of gangsters across the state.

On Day 150, police teams arrested individuals with one weapon, taking the total number of arrests to 38,390 since the campaign's launch. The milestone underscores the sustained, data-driven tempo of the operation, which has maintained near-daily enforcement activity across Punjab.

Context

The 'Gangstran Te Vaar' campaign — loosely translated as 'Strike Against Gangsters' — was initiated by the Aam Aadmi Party-led government of Punjab under Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann following the party's landslide victory in the 2022 assembly elections. The drive was framed as a decisive response to the state's long-standing challenges of organised crime, extortion rackets, and cross-border gang networks.

Punjab has historically grappled with recurring cycles of gang violence, narcotics trafficking, and targeted killings, often with alleged linkages to operatives based abroad. The current campaign represents one of the most sustained crackdowns in the state's recent policing history.

Policy Backdrop

The AAP government made dismantling gangster syndicates a central plank of its governance agenda after 2022, pairing law-enforcement action with intelligence-led mapping of criminal networks and their associates. The approach — identifying, mapping, and then raiding locations linked to gang associates — reflects a shift toward structured, data-backed policing rather than reactive enforcement.

Over 150 days, Punjab Police has maintained an average of more than 3.7 raids per day based on the figures shared by the CMO, with cumulative arrests crossing the 38,000 mark. The seizure of weapons alongside suspects has been a consistent feature of the operation, aimed at disrupting the supply of arms to criminal networks.

Stakeholders and Impact

The primary targets of the campaign are individuals identified as associates or facilitators of active gangster networks operating within and beyond Punjab. Residents of the state — particularly in districts with historically high gang activity — stand to benefit from reduced extortion threats and gang-related violence if the campaign's momentum is sustained.

Civil liberties observers and legal experts have, in broader national discourse, flagged the importance of ensuring that large-scale raid-and-arrest campaigns adhere to due process, though no specific concerns have been formally raised about this operation in publicly available information. The scale of 38,390 arrests makes judicial and custodial oversight a matter of ongoing institutional importance.

What's Next

Punjab Police is expected to continue releasing periodic crime statistics as the campaign progresses beyond the 150-day mark. Analysts will watch whether the government tables legislative measures on organised crime in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha to complement the enforcement push with structural legal reforms.

The trajectory of the campaign — and whether arrest volumes translate into successful prosecutions — will be a key indicator of its long-term effectiveness in dismantling gang infrastructure across the state.