On 12 May 1710 Baba Banda Singh Bahadur Ji defeated the army of Wazir Khan, faujdar of Sirhind, at Chappar Chiri near what is now Mohali. Wazir Khan was killed on the field.
Wazir Khan had ordered the bricking up of Sahibzada Zorawar Singh Ji and Sahibzada Fateh Singh Ji at Sirhind six years earlier. The battle is remembered primarily as the answer to that.
Sirhind was taken and destroyed. Banda Singh Bahadur Ji established a capital at Lohgarh in the Shivaliks, struck coin in the name of the Gurus, and issued a seal under the same names.
In the territory he held he abolished the zamindari system and vested the land in those who cultivated it. That is the first such measure anywhere in the subcontinent.
Fateh Burj at Chappar Chiri, completed in 2011, is a 100 metre tower on the battlefield site and is the tallest victory tower in India.
Wazir Khan's force was the Sirhind garrison with contingents from the neighbouring chiefs and artillery. The other side was larger in numbers and much worse armed, made up in good part of men of the tract who had joined on the march up from the Malwa, and the accounts describe the fighting going against it before it turned.
Bhai Baj Singh Ji and Bhai Fateh Singh Ji are the two named in the accounts as having reached Wazir Khan. The Sirhind army broke when he went down, which is the ordinary way a field battle of that century ended.
Baba Banda Singh Bahadur Ji was taken at Gurdas Nangal in 1715 and executed at Delhi in 1716 with his companions. Five years is the whole life of the state he built, and the land settlement he made in it lasted exactly as long as he did.