Silent Watchers: In Punjab, everyone knows who catches the smugglers and who lets them go. They wear government badges, drive white Boleros, and call themselves Intelligence officers, but, no one can tell which intelligence. The CBI’s arrest of Harcharan Singh Bhullar (IPS) DIG with Punjab Police, showed only one layer of the truth. Beneath it lies a deeper system, a web of Police Intelligence Units,  mobile wings of excise and taxation department vigilance cells and confidential informers, who report to each other but rarely to the state.

They are not spies for the nation. They are actually accountants of corruption. They watch, they record, and they collect.

Ghosts in Uniform

In Punjab’s governance, ghosts don’t wear white sheets, they wear white shirts, uniforms and carry files. Every few years, a new officer falls. Every file names someone small, never the creator of the system. Somewhere between Dhandari’s freight yards and Gobindgarh’s furnaces, another thousands crore slips quietly out of public reach. (Based on an internal audit synopsis shared by a retired Finance Department official, 2024, estimating revenue leakages through fake billing, transport cartels, and manipulation by excise and taxation dept.)

This isn’t just a story about corruption. It’s about the machinery that protects it.

Birth of a Ghost Force

Story of 2013: Enforcement Intelligence Unit (EIU), Excise and Taxation Department Punjab, began like a rumor. No government notification, No cabinet note, No written order, yet it existed, raiding, sealing, collecting, intimidating under the signatures of those who later claimed it didn’t. An RTI reply dated Oct 2024, from the Excise and taxation Department Punjab, confirmed what insiders already whispered:

“No such task force exists in papers.”

And yet, businessmen across the Punjab remember the knock on their gates, the files opened without warrant, and the demands made off-record. Created under then Excise and taxation Commissioner Anurag Verma (2013–2015), the EIU was the ghost army, operating without law, but within the system.

Its officers had ID cards, vehicles, and stationery with official seals. What they lacked was legality.

Dhandari Leak

Dhandari Dry Port, Ludhiana, an audit report from 2022 hinted at missing freight records, unaccounted VAT filings, and under-reported duties, a shadow network bleeding the state of thousands of crores. According to a retired senior excise and taxation Punjab officer familiar with the investigation, Punjab’s annual revenue leakage “may now exceed ₹1 lakh crore,” mostly through fake billing, fuel cartels, and transport manipulation.

Many of the same names from the EIU files appeared here too Excise and Taxation Punjab inspectors, transport clerks, and private “advisors” with access to dry port systems. It was not a racket of greed. It was a structure of permission and corruption.

New Chain Reaction:- FIR 155/2023

October 2023, FIR No. 155/2023 at Sirhind Police Station opened a furnace of links. Scrap dealer Akash Batta was accused of fake GST invoices and forged transport papers. The case should have stayed an Excise and Taxation investigation but it didn’t. Two years later, in October 2025, Batta turned whistle-blower. He complained to the CBI Anti-Corruption Branch that Harcharan Singh Bhullar DIG, he demanded ₹8 lakh rupees and monthly payments to “settle” the old case. The CBI marked the notes, trapped Bhullar’s aide Krishanu Sharda, a national-level hockey player from Nabha settled in Chandigarh, and arrested Bhullar himself.

The arrest shook the police service but it also reopened older wounds.

Bhullar had once led the SIT against Bikram Majithia, and was considered close to the Chief Minister’s circle.

Missing Link

Inside Sharda’s seized diary were phone numbers of Excise and Taxation officers, notes about properties abroad, and hawala figures. Among them were entries pointing businessman, politicians and bureaucrats, but one thing is missing from the investigation and that is an old restaurant manager owned by Bhullar’s family in Officers’ Colony, Patiala, He is the actual person who allegedly takes care of all accounts black and white. He is still untraceable. His absence speaks louder than any confession.

According to CBI officials familiar with the case, the data trail now touches individuals involved in designing the old EIU framework. Whether the inquiry will investigate those people, remains uncertain.

Bureaucratic Shuffle

On 16 October 2025, the same day Bhullar was caught, Jaskaran Singh Brar, Joint Commissioner, Excise and Taxation Department was abruptly transferred from Investigation to Appeals. His section had handled fake-billing investigations, including cases linked to Batta and a pasar network, which operated with impunity. The shuffle acted as a firewall moving a key officer off the trail. Colleagues say Brar had clashed with senior officers over “unofficial collections” managed through EIU-style squads.

His removal signaled the existence of that invisible hand which the bureaucracy used to protect itself.

Political Quiet

Through it all, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann stayed silent. Under India’s federal law, the CBI cannot operate in Punjab without state consent, unless directed by a constitutional court. So how was a state-cadre IPS officer arrested? Did the state issue consent or did the CBI act under a judicial order? No official clarification has been made. Meanwhile, BJP strategists, according to political analysts, seize the opportunity. With the Tarn Taran by-polls approaching and Sikh radicals expected to re-enter the public field, the turmoil could weaken AAP and split the Sikh vote.

For Delhi, analysts suggest, it’s “perfect timing.”

Pattern Older Than Any Party

1. From Darbara Singh to Bhagwant Mann, every government has created its own invisible army and then pretended to exorcise it.
2. Darbara Singh (1980–83): SYL water rights and militancy mismanagement.
3. Surjit Singh Barnala (1985–87): Police excesses under central pressure.
4. Parkash Singh Badal (multiple terms): Sand Mining, Cartels, nepotism, Excise Scam, Liqure Scams, Transport Mafia, Cable Mafia and sacrilege cover-ups.
5. Captain Amarinder Singh: Sand-mining scandal, foreign assets probe, and corruption inaction.
6. Bhagwant Mann: Continuation of sand mining, Police corruption allegations, “digital silence,” and unfulfilled anti-corruption promises.

Each one promised reform. Each one left behind the same machinery.

Breaking the Chains: A Financial Revolution for Punjab’s Generation Z

Floods of Neglect: Demanding a Judicial Reckoning for Bhakra’s Betrayal

Ghosts Remain

A retired excise officer told Samvad:

“We don’t chase tax evaders; we negotiate with them.”

That single sentence defines the system. As Punjab limps under debt, its educated youth flee abroad, and its farmers stare at dry canals, the state continues to leak money through invisible pipes,  built by its own servants. The ghost task force may be disbanded on paper, but it still lives in the government, in the silence of ministers, and in the comfort of those who call themselves reformers.

State haunted by its own system, because every ghost was once a government order that never got signed. System which is running an invisible machinery that results in losses of revenue to the state of Punjab in hundreds of crores of rupees every year and is quite different from the corruption in the spending of Government revenues.

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