Phillaur Fort

Phillaur Fort stands on the GT Road at the southern edge of Phillaur, on the north bank of the Sutlej. It began as a Mughal sarai, a fortified rest house for travellers, military and trade traffic on the Agra-Lahore highway, and is generally linked to the reign of Shah Jahan. During the misl period the sarai changed hands among local Sikh chiefs. It was later taken by Ranjit Singh’s diwan, Mohkam Chand, from Megh Singh, the successor of Tara Singh Ghaiba of the Dallewalia confederacy. The site’s importance grew after the Treaty of Amritsar (1809) between Ranjit Singh and the East India Company fixed the Sutlej as the limit of his territory. Ludhiana, the British post on the opposite bank, was only a short distance away, so Phillaur became the easternmost outpost of the Sikh Empire. Ranjit Singh had the sarai converted into a fortress in 1809. The work was directed by Mohkam Chand, with help from the Maharaja’s French and Italian officers, which gave the fort a distinctly European military character. It is built of red brick and mortar, with a wide moat, bastions, and outer walls inclined inwards to deflect cannon fire. Dhanpat Rai managed the post and also handled Ranjit Singh’s affairs for his lands across the river. After the First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-46) the British took over the fort and used it as an artillery depot. In 1891 it was handed to the Punjab Police, and the Police Training School opened on 1 January 1892, making it one of the oldest police training institutions in India. The Finger Print Bureau, set up in 1892, is among the oldest forensic institutions in the region. Very little of the original Mughal sarai survives, mainly the Lahori and Delhi gateways and some of the original rooms. Most of what stands today belongs to the Sikh-era rebuilding and later British and modern additions. Inside the ramparts are the police training college buildings, the director’s residence, the Finger Print Bureau, and the shrine of Pir Baba Abdullah Shah Ji. The fort was notified as a protected monument by the Archaeological Survey of India in 2010. It is still a working police campus, now called the Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Police Academy, so it is open for the public on Thursdays and its custodianship has been a point of debate over heritage access.