Secret Indian Memo Orders Crackdown vs Sikh Critics

India instructed its consulates in North America to launch a “sophisticated crackdown scheme” against Sikh diaspora groups in Western countries, a secret memo issued in April 2023 by India’s Ministry of External Affairs showed, Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim reported for The Intercept.

The site of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar's assassination. He was murdered in Vancouver in June, two months after being named as a target in the document. I Photo: Leoboudv Wikimedia Commons

The memo lists Sikh dissidents under investigation by India’s intelligence agencies, including the Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

“Concrete measures shall be adopted to hold the suspects accountable,” the memo says. Nijjar was murdered in Vancouver in June, two months after being named as a target in the document, a killing the Canadian government said was ordered by Indian intelligence.

The memo, entitled “Action Points on Khalistan Extremism, addresses India’s growing concerns about its reputation due to activism from Sikh dissident organizations and portrays its political enemies as extremist or even terrorist organizations.

A leader of another of the listed groups, Sikhs for Justice, was the target of an Indian assassination plot, according to federal prosecutors in the US.

The indictment, unsealed last week, accused Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, of working with Indian officials to kill Sikhs for Justice general counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American citizen based in New York.

The document instructs officials at its consulates to cooperate with Indian intelligence agencies to confront the groups Sikhs for Justice, Babbar Khalsa International, Sikh Youth of America, Sikh Coordination Committee East Coast, World Sikh Parliament, and Shiromani Akali Dal Amritsar America.

It suggests that Nijjar and several other “suspects” are affiliated with one of these groups, Babbar Khalsa International. Babbar Khalsa International is proscribed as a terrorist organization in the US and Canada, but the other organizations named in the document are considered legal in both countries.

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