US Charges Over Sikh Killing

On 29 Nov, Federal prosecutor Damian Williams unsealed a superseding indictment alleging murder-for-hire charges against Indian national Nikhil Gupta, aka Nick, 52, in connection with a foiled plot to assassinate a separatist US citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannu in New York City (See SDW  Vol. 1 Issue 11 Story 1). Czech authorities arrested Gupta on 30 Jun and handed him over to the US under the bilateral extradition treaty between the United States and the Czech Republic. The charges say, that in or around May 2023, an Indian government employee CC-1 and others recruited Gupta to execute the killing of the victim. At CC-1’s direction, through an intermediary, Gupta contacted a hitman who was an undercover US law enforcement officer. On 9 Jun, CC-1 and Gupta arranged for an associate to deliver $15,000 in cash to the hitman as an advance payment for the murder. Gupta told the hitman to hold off the killing until 24 Jun. The timing coincides with India’s PM Modi’s state visit to the US. US President Joe Biden hosted PM Modi at a state dinner at the White House on 21 Jun and PM Modi addressed the US Congress on 23 Jun. The announcement of the plot has sent fear through the Sikh diaspora. Many Sikh Americans who do not support the Khalistan separatist cause worry they will inadvertently come into harm’s way. Arjun Sethi, a human rights lawyer, said the revelations raise serious questions about the nature of the US-India relations: ‘Why did Biden celebrate Modi with a state dinner and Congress honor him with a joint address while his government was conspiring to assassinate a Sikh American on US soil?’

Earlier this summer, two senior Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Indian intelligence officers in two major Western countries were asked to leave their stations. The US also blocked RAW from replacing its station head in Washington, DC. The expelled officers were head of RAW station in San Francisco and second-in-command of its operations in London. This is unprecedented and has never happened since RAW was founded in 1968. On 26 Nov, the Indian High Commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, said the US has shared ‘legally presentable’ inputs with India but Canada is yet to provide ‘relevant information’ on the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Verma was speaking on CTV’s Question Hour. Meanwhile, TIME magazine spoke to Gurpatwant Singh Pannu. Pannu stated, ‘The Indian government and the Modi regime want to kill me, they want to eliminate me for running the global Khalistan referendum voting campaign.’ To another question, he responds, ‘An act of terrorism is when you're bombing or killing innocents, or even when you're killing for a political goal. A political assassination is also an act of violence...I will not respond back with violence. I will not use a bullet. I will never incite the people of Panjab working with me to take violence as the path. Because that is exactly what I'm fighting. We are fighting India’s violence with votes.’ Pannu says his work is motivated by one goal. ‘To pursue the right of the Sikh community to self-determination.’ In the interview, Pannu comes across vastly toned down from his earlier aggressive stances and acerbic.

On 26 Nov, India's Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, offered prayers at a Gurdwara in Long Island, New York on the occasion of Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary. His visit came in the wake of the Financial Times report that – at that point – an unspecified while back US authorities thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate Pannu on American soil and issued a warning to India’s government over concerns that it was involved in the plot. On his visit, Sandhu was accompanied by the Consul General in New York Randhir Jaiswal and Deputy Consul General Varun Jeph. Jeph highlighted the growth in the India-US partnership, whether in the healthcare, energy, IT, new emerging technologies, semiconductor, or education sectors. However, most Sikhs in the US work in trucking, taxi services, petrol pumps, motels, security, and other blue-collar jobs. This reveals the gap between the elite Sikhs and ordinary Sikhs. On Sandhu’s visit, a group of Khalistani supporters heckled him but were escorted out by members of the Sikh community. These hecklers were raising the issue of Pannu being targeted. This affected the decorum of the Gurdwara. However, later developments – the US bringing charges against Nikhil Gupta – show us that what the hecklers were saying was not wrong, though their method could have been better. Meanwhile, Indian media went on to propagate that Sikhs for Justice had fabricated the heckling video. The next day, former US President Trump-aligned group Sikhs of America issued a statement saying ‘Gurdwaras are places of worship and should be free from personal political views.’ Perhaps they forget that being principled in both spiritual and political struggles is part of the foundation of the Sikh religion.

India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, won three out of four key state elections. The crucial polls are less than six months before the vital 2024 national elections. The BJP wrested control of the heartland states of Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan from the INC and maintained its power in Madhya Pradesh. INC only won Telangana, where they defeated regional satrap Bhartiya Rashtra Samiti who were until 5 Oct, 2022 called Telangana Rashtra Samiti. They had been in power twice since the formation of the state. The results point to the fact that now the battle for India is between Hindi-belt states versus the rest of the country. This has three major implications: one, the INC alone cannot take on the BJP. The INDIA alliance that the INC mooted along with other parties opposed to the BJP needs to come alive to be able to present a credible force in the Lok Sabha elections. Two, the national caste census, a dire need of the hour, will be opposed by the Hindi-belt states and will be very difficult to carry out. Three, the inevitable delimitation process to realign constituencies according to population will never get the proportional representation rider and will be always in favor of the Hindi-belt states. The irony for AAP, which contested all these states using Panjab’s resources, is that it could win less than NOTA votes, totaling less than 1% of polled votes. Yet, for weeks the entire AAP political leadership was missing from Panjab and campaigning in these states going to the polls.

Panjab Assembly conducted its Winter Session on 28-29 Nov. On Day 1, members of the ruling AAP and principal opposition INC exchanged heated arguments over illegal mining but there was no time to raise Zira, teachers, farmers, law and order, or any other issue. Panjab CM Mann accused the BJP-led central government of being ‘anti-Panjab’ and said if it gets its way, it will not hesitate to drop ‘Panjab’ from the national anthem. Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema announced that in the appointment of law officers, the government has reserved 58 posts for Scheduled Castes and 178 posts are in the General Category. The government passed four Bills - Transfer of Property (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2023, the Registration (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2023, the Indian Stamp (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2023, and the Punjab Canal and Drainage Bill, 2023. All Bills were unanimously passed without any discussion, and without incorporating member comments. The way the Bills were passed was reminiscent of how the BJP passed the draconian Farm Laws in Sep 2020. For instance, INC’s Abohar MLA Sandeep Jakhar raised relevant points on the Drainage Bill, but no answers were provided. Earlier, on Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary, the AAP government announced the Mukhya Mantri Tirth Yatra Yojna under which elderly people would go on pilgrimage free of charge on trains and buses. This is what SAD did in its 2012-17 tenure, but the question is about funds. To raise funds, the new Bills make provisions for the government to levy a 2% stamp duty on property transfer and a 0.25% registration fee on home and vehicular loans.

The case of an elderly Indian Sikh woman, first reported in 2019, continues to attract widespread community support in England's West Midlands. ‘Gurmit Kaur, 78, came to the UK in 2009 and Smethwick has been home to her ever since,’ reads an online petition that has attracted over 65,000 signatures since it was launched in July 2020. ‘Gurmit Kaur has no family to turn to in the UK and no family to return to in Panjab so the local Sikh community has adopted her. Gurmit is a kind woman. Even though she has nothing she is generous and will always give what she can, when she can. Most of her days are spent volunteering at the local Gurdwara.’ More recently, We Are All Gurmit Kaur has been trending on social media platforms as the local community continues to rally around the widow. Salman Mirza, an immigration advisor for the Brushstroke Community Project, started the petition and is among those helping Ms. Kaur through the visa appeals process. The UK Home Office maintains that Ms Kaur is in contact with people in her village in Punjab and that she would be able to re-adjust to life there. In another case, 33-year-old Sikh man Karanjeet Singh said police had taken no action after a group of troublemakers entered his store and one of them hit him on the head with a bottle. The CCTV captured the group entering his convenience store in Oldbury on 19 Jun. Singh said, the police ‘just gave me a crime reference number.’ (See SDW Vol. 1 Issue 10, Story 1).

In 2019, on the occasion of Guru Nanak’s 550^th birth anniversary, the Panjab government decided to plant 550 saplings in every village. The Forest Department provided fruit and shady tree saplings in over 12,000 villages. The MGNREGA scheme provided the services of laborers to plant the saplings. The total saplings came up to 7.2 million. This was a laudable step because Panjab’s forest cover is reduced to 3.6% due to intensive agriculture. Sadly, four years later, more than 50% of those saplings have perished. Raman Kant Mishra, Principal chief conservator of forests, said. ‘Our job was only to provide saplings to villages. The plantation and maintenance part were with the Rural Development Department.’ The survival rate of saplings was the lowest in Sultanpur Lodhi, the center point of the Guru Nanak celebrations. Inquiries from sarpanches (village heads) also indicate that most villages did not receive saplings. In March of the same year, in Tarn Taran, hundreds of activists of Baba Jagtar Singh’s kar sewa (volunteer service) group started pulling down the darshani deori (gateway) of the historic Gurdwara associated with Guru Arjan. When locals protested and prevented further damage, the kar sewaks claimed they had SGPC’s permission. The SGPC denied it. Now the SGPC has restored the razed portion of the Deori. Before initiating the renovation work, a meeting was held in this regard with experts of the Directorate of Cultural Affairs Archaeology and Archives Museum Punjab, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.

In a climbdown for Panjab, on 25 Nov, retired judge Indu Malhotra suspended seven Panjab police officials for alleged dereliction of duty related to a security breach during PM Modi's visit to the state in January 2022. The judge passed the orders based on a detailed report submitted by the Director General of Police (DGP) of Panjab. During the incident, just after the Farmers’ Protest had ended in December 2021, the Congress was in power in Panjab. However, Captain Amarinder Singh quit as Chief Minister and floated his party – Panjab Lok Congress which had aligned itself with the BJP. Charanjit Singh Channi had taken over as CM. PM Modi was to visit Ferozepur for an election rally on 5 Jan 2022. A farmer union – the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee (KMSC) – was protesting Modi's visit. The weather was wet and cold. Unable to fly down by helicopter, the PM was coming by road from Bathinda. Ten thousand security personnel were deployed. Due to the farmers’ protest, the PM’s cavalcade was stranded on a highway for 20 minutes. PM Modi turned back and while leaving from Bathinda told officials. ‘Tell your CM, I could return alive.’ The statement was meant to malign the state’s image which is the usual Delhi media propaganda against Panjab. Channi stood up for Panjab. He revealed the PM had returned because people had not turned up for the rally. Now Panjab accepting a security breach is admitting to the state’s lapse, which was not the case.

On 25 Nov, unknown shooters shot at Panjabi singer and actor Gippy Grewal’s residence in White Rock, Vancouver, Canada. On 28 Nov, gangster Lawrence Bishnoi claimed responsibility on X (handle now withdrawn) for the shooting, and warned Grewal to stop looking up to and praising Bollywood star Salman Khan. Bishnoi is currently lodged in Ahmedabad jail and police say the tweet was from a European country. Grewal clarified in a statement that he is not close to Salman Khan. Meanwhile, The Punjab and Haryana High Court has summoned Panjab's Additional Director General of Prisons (ADGP) to explain why the Committee constituted in March 2023 to probe details of Lawrence Bishnoi’s two media interviews from jail had not yet filed the report. The direction came after the court earlier took suo moto cognizance against the use of mobile phones in the Panjab prison. Meanwhile, late Panjabi Singer Sidhu Moose Wala – whom Bishnoi had claimed responsibility for killing in May 2022 – crossed a historic milestone with his much-celebrated album Moosetape. The album has crossed one billion streams on Spotify. Moosetape has become the first Indian album to accomplish such a feat on Spotify. The song 295 – the 30th track on the album – turned Moose Wala into a worldwide rap superstar. The album is a testimony to Panjabi Sikh defiance and people's support worldwide. The state has been patronizing Bishnoi, allowing him to operate from inside jails, but the defiance keeps growing. (See SDW Vol. 1 Issue 6)

Two much-applauded cinematic representations omitted Sikh heroes from their narratives. On Netflix, The Railway Men is a competent mini-series based on the Bhopal gas tragedy of December 1984. It weaves in a sequence from the Sikh Genocide wherein a Sikh mother is trying to save her young son and a railway official assists them. The largely historically accurate series brings alive those dastardly times and is critical of state apathy but omits a real-life hero – Lieutenant Colonel Gurcharan Singh Khanuja, who turned off the gas leak and was rendered blind soon after. The new film Sam Bahadur on India’s first Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw is earning good reviews and doing well at the box office. FM Manekshaw was India’s Chief of Army Staff during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. A key aspect of this war was the creation of the Mukti Bahini – a guerrilla resistance movement consisting of the Bangladeshi military, paramilitary, and civilians. FM Manekshaw tasked one of India’s finest soldiers Major General Shabeg Singh from his hometown Amritsar to train the Mukti Bahini. The well-trained Mukti Bahini largely neutralized the Pakistan Army, easing the job for the Indian armed forces. The movie mentions Mukti Bahini but does not mention Major General Shabeg Singh. Likely because of Major General Shabeg Singh’s later role in fortifying Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) during “Operation Blue Star.” Sam Bahadur is produced by Ronnie Screwvalla’s RSVP movies. IRSVP was also producer of Punjab 95 on human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra who was extrajudicially killed by Panjab police. Punjab 95 has run into considerable trouble with the Indian Censor Board.