UK Denies Confiscating Khalistani Funds; India Bans ABC’s Sikh Documentary

‘Unconfirmed’ reports of the UK seizing ‘roughly £10 million from alleged Khalistani networks and over 5,000 additional bank accounts are currently under scrutiny’ (SDW Vol. 2 Issue 12, Story 7). The UK govt. has denied reports that have gone viral in Indian media saying PM Rishi Sunak has ‘struck Khalistani networks’ in Britain and seized the money. A spokesperson from the Home Office said, ‘The home office does not recognise these claims.’ Meanwhile, India has blocked the For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent-Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (ABC) doc­u­men­tary, Sikhs, Spies, and Mur­der, which investigates In­di­a’s ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing plans on for­eign soil; it has been asked to go off air af­ter going vi­ral on Google-owned YouTube within three days of its re­lease. YouTube in­formed ABC that they re­ceived an or­der from In­di­a’s Min­istry of In­for­ma­tion and Broad­cast­ing over the documentary. The spe­cific or­der was ‘con­fi­den­tial’ but it came un­der In­di­a’s In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Act (2000). An ABC spokesper­son said, ‘It was metic­u­lously re­searched and bal­anced, sought an ar­ray of per­spec­tives, and up­holds the high­est ed­i­to­r­ial stan­dards. We de­fend the au­di­ence’s fun­da­men­tal right to ac­cess this story, re­gard­less of their lo­ca­tion.’ In Feb 2023, India banned the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC) doc­u­men­tary, In­dia –The Modi Ques­tion. In Mar 2024, India blocked the Cana­dian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC) doc­u­men­tary in The Fifth Es­tate sec­tion ­ti­tled Con­tract to Kill on YouTube. In 2023, In­dia slipped to Rank 161/180 on the World Press Free­dom In­dex by Re­porters Sans Fron­tiers.