Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, one of the main leaders of the Khalistan movement, speaks to a Globe and Mail reporter at his law office in the Queens borough in New York City on Dec. 8, 2023. Pannun, head of Sikhs for Justice, filed a lawsuit in New York seeking unspecific damages from India for what he calls an 'unprecedented attempt to assassinate a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.'Stephanie Keith/The Globe and Mail
A Sikh independence activist is suing the government of India and senior Indian intelligence officials alleged to have hatched two assassination plots, including one that resulted in the death of outspoken temple leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, head of the Khalistan independence group Sikhs for Justice, filed the lawsuit in New York seeking unspecific damages from India for what he calls an “unprecedented attempt to assassinate a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.” The plan to kill Mr. Pannun, detailed in an indictment released by the U.S. Department of Justice, was thwarted in June, 2023, when the hitman hired by the alleged middleman working for Indian security services turned out to be an undercover U.S. federal agent.
Mr. Nijjar, an outspoken critic of India and advocate for an independent state in that country’s Punjab region, was not so lucky. He was gunned down outside his gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., that same month, in a plot Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Parliament in September, 2023, appears to have been ordered by India. Four Indian nationals who were residing in Canada have been charged by the RCMP in Mr. Nijjar’s murder.
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One of the people named in Mr. Pannun’s lawsuit is Nikhil Gupta, who is being held in a Brooklyn prison while he awaits trial on charges in the murder-for-hire plot. Three others – Vikram Yadav, a senior intelligence officer in India’s spy agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW); former RAW chief Samant Goel; and Ajit Doval, the country’s national security adviser – remain in India.
“While this action is only indicting the foot soldiers, this lawsuit is really against the government of India,” Mr. Pannun said.
The Indian High Commission in Ottawa declined to comment on the lawsuit. The Indian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit comes just days ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States – but Mr. Pannun said that, although the intelligence officials being sued report to Mr. Modi, he’s not named in the suit because he has diplomatic immunity.
Mr. Pannun, whose group is behind an unofficial global referendum for Khalistan’s independence from India, says the civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Southern New York is intended to hold the Indian government accountable for its alleged involvement in the assassination plots. His lawyers acknowledged seeking justice through the criminal courts would be difficult.
“They were successful in killing Mr. Nijjar,” Matthew Borden, Mr. Pannun’s lawyer, said in a video call. “And the same thing would have happened to Mr. Pannun but for the fact that the person that Mr. Gupta tried to hire was an undercover U.S. agent.”
India, which considers many involved in the Khalistani movement to be terrorists, extremists and militant separatists, has denied involvement in both cases. Mr. Gupta, who was arrested in the Czech Republic and extradited to the U.S. in June, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Richard Rogers, an international lawyer at Global Diligence LLP, a legal advisory firm specializing in human rights, international criminal law and sanctions, said India “has been trying to silence Mr. Pannun for years,” and accused the country of falsifying evidence against his client through the Interpol red-notice system, requests to law enforcement worldwide to locate and arrest a person, and using its economic and political clout with the U.S. to get away with it.
Mr. Pannun has been accused of using inflammatory language in the past, including telling Sikhs not to fly on Air India in November, 2023, warning their “life will be in danger.” Indian officials complained that call for a boycott was a reference to the 1985 Air India bombing, a terror attack orchestrated by Sikh extremists that killed 329 people after taking off from Montreal.
With reports from the Associated Press