Khalistan supporters chant and wave flags during the Vaisakhi Parade in Surrey B.C, on April 20.Ethan Cairns/The Globe and Mail
A Sikh Canadian separatist leader allegedly targeted for death by the Indian government says New Delhi arrested three of his secessionist colleagues Tuesday, part of what he called a crackdown on a cause that was championed by B.C.-based Hardeep Singh Nijjar before his fatal shooting last year.
Gurpatwant Pannun, the New York-based legal counsel for Sikhs for Justice, who also holds American citizenship, said he was in touch with the arrested men as recently as Monday. A criminal indictment unsealed in New York last November said a thwarted 2023 plot to kill Mr. Pannun was directed by an Indian government employee.
New Delhi has rejected the allegation but the Washington Post reported U.S. officials believe the scheme to kill Mr. Pannun was ultimately approved by the former head of India’s spy agency.
Punjab’s director-general of police Gaurav Yadav announced via X Tuesday that three men were arrested after pro-Khalistan slogans were written on walls in public places. He alleged the accused in at least one instance sent photos and videos of their handiwork to Mr. Pannun, whom he described as their “New York-based mastermind.”
Mr. Pannun confirmed he received photos and videos from one of the men.
Sikhs for Justice is part of the Khalistan movement among some Sikhs who wish to carve an independent homeland out of Punjab in northern India. The group is banned in India but is staging an unofficial referendum among Sikhs worldwide on the question of creating this separate state.
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He said India has accelerated a clampdown on Sikhs for Justice campaigners in India since Canada earlier this month arrested and charged several men with the murder of Mr. Nijjar, a B.C. Sikh separatist leader whose death last year Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has blamed on the Indian government. India has denied any involvement. Mr. Nijjar was helping organize the Khalistan referendum.
“In the last one week over two dozen residences of Khalistan referendum campaigners were raided,” Mr. Pannun said in a statement.
He accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “continuously criminalizing the Khalistan referendum.” Those campaign workers, he said, are merely distributing referendum voter registration forms in New Delhi and the states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh while writing “pro Khalistan slogans at public places.”
Mr. Pannun denied a report in Indian media that suggested people are being paid for writing the slogans. Asked about the accusation he’s a “mastermind” behind the pro-Khalistan slogans, he said he’s merely registering Sikh voters for the symbolic independence referendum.
India’s High Commission in Canada declined a request for comment.
Mr. Nijjar died in a gangland-style slaying in June, 2023 outside a Sikh temple in Surrey B.C.
Only weeks before the B.C. plumber was killed, a publication by Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board detailed the Indian government’s campaign against the secessionist Sikhs for Justice. In a May 31, 2023, research note, the IRB noted how New Delhi had filed charges against SFJ members, blocked their websites in India and accused the group of trying to “radicalize impressionable youth and breed enmity on the grounds of region and religion.”
The IRB research note, citing an interview with an unidentified academic expert in Sikh politics, said there have been cases where “families in India of overseas Sikh activists have been harassed and even detained” by authorities to put pressure on these overseas activists to “stop their political activities.”
The research, which is consulted by IRB staff when adjudicating asylum claims, also suggested India is using facial recognition technology to track and identify Sikhs for Justice members, citing open-source reports. It cited the Sikh politics expert as saying it would “certainly be risky for a member of a banned Sikh organization to return to India for the fear of harassment, detention, or even arrest.”