Page 199 - Lohgarh

Battle of Gurdas Nangal and Arrest of Banda Singh Bahadur w 199

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their lives. According to Muhammed Qasim Aurangabadi two thousand
Sikhs were killed and a few hundred were captured too; two thousands
heads of the dead Sikhs were severed and dispatched for exhibition
before the Emperor. About one thousand Sikhs, who had been arrested
there or elsewhere, were handcuffed and chained. They too were taken
to Delhi to be paraded before the Emperor. 3
Now, as Banda Singh had shut himself in the Fortress of Gurdas
Nangal; and thousands of troops, led by Abdus Samad Khan, had
th
surrounded the Fortress from all sides. On the 30 of March 1715, the
Emperor sent his messenger to Azz Khan, the deputy Governor of
Sarhind, asking him to march towards Gurdas Nangal to help Abdus
Samad Khan. In the meanwhile, the Emperor got the news that Daulat
Khan Muin (of Sultanpur) too had already reached Goindwal on the
th
20 of March, along with his 500 soldiers and had taken control of the
shores of the river Beas; the Emperor assigned his duty to stop and
arrest/kill the Sikhs if they tried to escape through that side. 4
On the 10 th of April 1715, the Emperor got (wrong) news from
Jammu that Banda Singh and his wife and son had been arrested; in
fact, the truth was that they were among those who had been
surrounded by the Mughal army at Gurdas Nangal. 5
By this time, Abdus Samad Khan too had returned to Lahore. When
he came to know that the Muslim armies had surrounded Banda Singh
at Gurdas Nangal, he did not rest and reached Gurdaspur with twelve
thousand cavalry, and the same number of foot-soldiers and a very large
number of cannons. He covered this distance of 40 kos (about 125
kilometres) within three days. In between, he attacked Batala and
Kalanaur and freed these towns from the Sikhs. On all these fronts, he
had to face tough fighting by the Sikhs. The Sikhs fought with arrows
and matchlocks. 6
By this time, the number of the Mughal army surrounding Gurdas
Nangal had grown to more than fifty thousand. Abdus Samad Khan
himself was commanding this huge Mughal army. Saif-ud-Din Ahmed
Khan (Faujdar of Gujrat), Iradatmand Khan (Faujdar of Eimanabad), Nur
Mohammed Khan (Faujdar of Aurangabad and Pasrur), Sheikh