US thwarted plot to kill Khalistan separatist Gurpatwant Pannu

29
November
2023

On 21 Nov, Sikhs for Justice leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannu announced a $10,000 award for Australian Wen Johnson who disrupted the India-Australia World Cup Cricket final match in a Free Palestine t-shirt. Pannu also gave a call to picket Air India flight AI 188 and flight AI 186 at Toronto and Vancouver international airports respectively in Canada on 1 Dec. (SDW Vol. 1 Issue 8, story 2.) The next day, Financial Times reported that an unspecified while back the 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. The report came two months after Canadian PM Trudeau said security agencies were probing ‘credible allegations’ about a potential link between Indian government agents and the killing of Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Vancouver in June 2023. Unlike the earlier antagonistic denial to Canada’s allegations as ‘absurd,’ this time India’s response has been muted. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said on 22 Nov, ‘The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries.’ Bagchi added India takes such inputs ‘seriously.’ On the same day, Pakistani intelligence assessments revealed that the Indian government's intelligence agency – the Research and Analysis Wing – has been planning assassinations targeting Sikh and Kashmiri activists living in foreign countries. (SDW Vol. 1 Issue 4, Story 2). In what looked like a distraction from this news, on 22 Nov, Indian National Investigation Agency raided 14 locations in Panjab and Haryana in connection with 2023 attacks on the Indian Consulate in San Francisco on 19 Mar and 2 Jul.

Photo by PTI

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