Kup Rahira
Site of the Vadda Ghallughara (Great Holocaust) of February 1762, when Ahmad Shah Abdali caught the Sikh convoy of families moving south.
Kup and Rahira are villages near Malerkotla in Sangrur district. On 5 February 1762 Ahmad Shah Abdali's army caught the Sikh convoy of families here and killed perhaps twenty to thirty thousand people in a single day, the Vadda Ghallughara.
A memorial to the Vadda Ghallughara now stands at Kup Rahira.
The fields around the villages are farmland again.
People
Founder of the Afghan Durrani empire, who invaded Punjab eight or nine times between 1748 and 1767, crushed the Marathas at Panipat and twice destroyed the Harmandir Sahib.
Supreme commander of the Dal Khalsa, wounded many times at the Vadda Ghallughara. Struck coins at Lahore and was called Sultan-ul-Qaum, king of the nation.