On 5 February 1762 Ahmad Shah Abdali caught the Dal Khalsa near Kup and Rahira, close to Malerkotla, moving with its families toward the desert. He had marched from Lahore in about two days to do it.
The Sikhs formed a moving screen around the non-combatants and fought south through the day. Estimates of the dead run from ten thousand to fifty thousand, a large proportion of them women, children and old people. It is the single heaviest loss in Sikh history.
The account holds that the survivors regrouped within months and fought Abdali again at Amritsar in October of the same year.
Abdali demolished the Harmandir and filled the sarovar in the same campaign. It was rebuilt.
The memorial at Kup Rahira in Malerkotla district was built long afterward. For most of two centuries the place was a set of fields with a name.
The estimates of the dead run from ten thousand to fifty thousand, and the higher figures include the families travelling with the force. There was never a count.
The screen the fighting men formed around the vahir, the baggage and the families, held through most of the day's march. That is what the accounts emphasise and it is why anyone survived.
The Chhota Ghallughara near Kahnuwan in 1746 is the earlier one. Two massacres sixteen years apart, both named, and neither with a casualty figure anyone can defend.