How the Muslims tricked Trilochanpala, kidnapped and murdered him by luring him using Muslims dressed as Hindu hermits (Sanyasis)
After snatching victory through subterfuge at Lahore, the Muslims began to penetrate deeper into the country. Anandpala attained veergati (martyrdom through the deceit of the Muslims, as had his father Jayapala. Now the teenaged grandson of Jayapala Shaiya, Tirlochanpala Shahiya took the reins of the death struggle against the Muslims in his hands. He was then just a teenager at seventeen years of age when the ascended the throne of the Shahiyas.
The first move he did was to shift the capital from Lahore to Kangra in today’s Himachal Pradesh. Kangra was in a relatively fortified position, from where he tried to reorganize the defense of his vastly reduced domains. The Shahiya empire which stretched from Heart to Haridwar, was now pushed to one fifth its size and its western border which was once at Heart during the reign of Jayapala Shahiya was now pushed about a thousand miles east at Kalka in the Shivalik Hills which were the foothills of the Himalayas. The Shahiya domains had now shrunk and did not occupy a position to block the further advance of the Muslims into India. But he followed the valiant example of his father and grandfather and allied himself with the kings of Kashyapmeru (Kashmir) and Tibet, to eject the Muslims from Punjab and Upaganasthan (Afghanistan). The enraged Muslim governor of Punjab, wanted to nip this effort in the bud.
He again made use of the patented Muslim mechanism of subterfuge. He sent a group of his soldiers dressed up as Hindu mendicants to meet Tirlochanpala. These mendicants went to Kangra and sent in a message that they come from Kubha (Kabul) and bring a message to their king whose ancestors originally ruled Kabul. With this trick, they gained entry into Tirlochanpala’s humble household (As the former imperial Shahiyas had now been reduced to penury, as against the opulence they once commanded). Once inside his house, the mendicants surrounded the unsuspecting young prince and sliced his neck and made off with his severed head, leaving a note beside his headless body that Islam will finally overcome anyone who decided to block the path of Allah’s soldiers.
Thus with Tirlochapala’s death, the last scion of the Hindu dynasty that ruled Afghanistan and Punjab passed away. The next Hindu king of Punjab was to be Maharaja Ranjit Singh who ascended the throne after a gap of eight hundred years in the 18th century. The interregnum was to be the dark interlude of Muslim tyranny, during which the majority of the Hindus of Afghanistan, Paktoonistan and West Punjab were to become Muslims at the pain of death.