Sikh activists in the US and Canada are being threatened, a year after Trudeau linked their leader’s killing to India

As a physician specializing in addictions, Dr. Jasmeet Bains, the first Sikh American elected to the California Legislature, was accustomed to risky situations.

Still, Bains said she was shocked when four men showed up at her office last August, shortly after California passed its resolution declaring the killing of thousands of Sikhs in India in 1984 a genocide. The men, who appeared to be of Indian descent, warned that they would “do whatever it takes to come after you,” Bains said.

The threat was just the beginning.

Since last summer, Bains said, she has received more than 100 threatening text messages. She has seen someone taking photos of her Bakersfield home from a parked truck and the lock on her mailbox has been repeatedly broken.

Bains reported the incident to local police at her office and the surveillance of her home to the state Assembly Sergeant-at-Arms. Reuters has not reviewed the text messages.

In late September, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government had credible evidence that the Indian government was involved in the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia, Bains said the Sergeant-at-Arms conducted a security assessment of her home and urged her to take precautions. The FBI contacted her in October about the threats in her office, Bains said.

Bains said she has started screening phone calls and avoiding traveling alone, occasionally requesting a security detail at official events.

“My life has changed,” she told Reuters. “I don’t go anywhere alone anymore. I make sure my staff is always with me, which is difficult for someone as independent as I am.”

Reuters spoke to 19 Sikh community leaders, including three U.S. elected officials, who said they or their organizations have been targeted with threats and intimidation in the United States and Canada over the past year as law enforcement agencies conduct criminal investigations into the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada and the foiled assassination attempt on another separatist leader in the U.S.

The Sikhs Reuters spoke to described being harassed online; being monitored in their homes and places of worship; having their personal details released online or through doxxing and “swatting” – the filing of a false police report to provoke a police response.

Seven Sikh activists told Reuters the FBI or Royal Canadian Mounted Police warned them last year that their lives could be in danger, without identifying the source of the threat.

An FBI official said the agency issues such alerts when it receives credible evidence of a threat, but declined to comment further. The Canadian Federal Police declined to confirm how many people were ordered to issue alerts.

The FBI also warned the Sikh community more broadly about “transnational repression” — efforts by a foreign state to intimidate or threaten political opponents in another country — and issued a public service announcement in Punjabi urging people to report threats or intimidation. Two meetings were also held for Sikh advocacy groups, FBI officials and participants said.

Meanwhile, four Indian nationals are facing charges in Canada for murder and conspiracy in connection with the June 2023 fatal shooting of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside his gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, in Surrey, British Columbia.

Lawyers for the four men did not respond to requests for comment.

Separately, the U.S. Justice Department has charged Indian citizen Nikhil Gupta with attempting to arrange the assassination of separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun at the request of an Indian intelligence official. Gupta has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in New York. His lawyer declined to comment.

India denies involvement in the murder of Nijjar and the attempted murder of Pannun. It has promised to investigate the plot against Pannun, but not against Nijjar.

“Nijjar was a designated terrorist,” Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s high commissioner to Canada, told Reuters in an interview in June. “I have no love lost for him.”

Many of the threats the Sikh activists described to Reuters came from anonymous accounts on X. Others came from unknown phone numbers and anonymous text messages, they said.

Reuters was unable to determine the origin of the threats.

At least six activists suspected that the Indian government or its supporters were behind the intimidation, but admitted that this was difficult to prove, especially when the threats came from anonymous parties.

Kanwarpal Singh, political secretary of the Punjab-based Dal Khalsa group, which lobbies for a separate state, has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of trying to smear and isolate Sikh separatists. He did not specify whether he was referring to separatists in India or abroad.

The Indian embassy in Washington and Modi’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Verma did not respond to an email seeking information about threats against Sikh separatists and other activists or the criminal cases in Canada and the United States.

Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, two FBI officials declined to comment directly on India’s possible role in transnational repression. One said they were “looking at a very broad range of aggressive countries.”

FBI officials said it can be difficult to determine whether the threats come from a foreign government or from criminals using similar tactics to extort victims.

Like Nijjar, Pannun is a proponent of a fringe demand to secede from India and create an independent state called Khalistan. The movement led to a violent insurgency in the Indian state of Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s before being crushed by Delhi.

Pannun says he continues to receive violent threats online, even after the Justice Department exposed the assassination plot last November.

“Wherever you run, I will come, enter it and kill you,” said a Hindi email dated May 7 and seen by Reuters.

In April, the X account @randomatheist_ wrote to Pannun, “Polonium-210 has arrived in DC,” an apparent reference to the toxic radioactive isotope used to assassinate former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Pannun’s organization Sikhs for Justice has an office in Washington, DC

X did not respond to requests for comment.

Pannun asked further questions about the threats to US law enforcement.

In 2019, India declared Sikhs for Justice an illegal association, citing its involvement in extremist activities. Pannun and 15 other members of the organization were charged a year later with terrorism-related crimes, including trying to encourage a mutiny in the Indian army.

Pannun denies the allegations.

Pritpal Singh, a supporter of a separate Sikh state and founder of the American Sikh Caucus Committee, an activist group that has not taken a position on secession, also told Reuters that the threats and surveillance continued after he received a warning from the FBI in June last year.

A few days after the alert, he said, a strange car pulled up and started watching his California home. He said he noticed a second instance of surveillance in November.

The episodes were captured on home security cameras and the video was viewed by Reuters. Pritpal said he reported the surveillance to the FBI.

On June 18, the anniversary of Nijjar’s murder, an account on X wrote in Hindi that it was time to “plan your assassination.” Another X account wrote, “RIP Pritpal.” Reuters saw screenshots of both messages, which his family reported to the FBI.

Nate Schenkkan, senior director of research at the nonprofit Freedom House in Washington, D.C., which monitors global civil rights, said the campaign “represents a kind of worst-case scenario for transnational repression: when a large state acts completely outside the law and uses every tool at its disposal to silence dissent in another country.”

He said India appeared to ignore the possible diplomatic, legal and political consequences of the campaign, citing prosecutions underway in the US and Canada.

Harjap Singh Japhi, a grocery store owner in Greenwood, Indiana, who has been charged by India with terrorism-related offenses over his past involvement with Sikhs for Justice, told Reuters that FBI agents came to his home in the fall of 2022 to ask about his possible involvement in a bombing in the late 1980s.

The agents told him that India had sent the agency some documents related to the attack.

Japhi, 44, said he was just a child at the time.

Japhi’s wife Rajvinder Shokar also told Reuters about the FBI visit.

FBI officials told the news agency they could not comment on Japhi’s case. Reuters could not independently confirm the bombing story or the visit to the couple’s home.

According to the FBI, false referrals are a common feature of transnational repression. The FBI is working with local law enforcement agencies to determine how to more rigorously investigate referrals, especially when the target is a political opponent.

Japhi said that the day after Nijjar’s murder, he received an anonymous phone call from someone posing as a member of an Indian organized crime syndicate, warning him that he was next.

In December, Japhi was doxed via a now-deleted X account by posting his home and business addresses and local health department inspection details online, according to screenshots shared with Reuters.

Japhi said he reported the threatening phone call and doxxing to the FBI.

Bains told Reuters she was unsure whether she had faced cross-border repression by the Indian government.

In May, the California Assembly passed a bill she introduced that would train state law enforcement to identify and respond to cross-border repression.

“When I experience it, more people experience it,” she said. “And that impacts everyone, not just the Sikh community.”

Sikhs protest outside the Indian Consulate in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on September 25, 2023. REUTERS/Wa Lone/File photo Security guards outside a restaurant as California Rep. Dr. Jasmeet Bains, the first Sikh-American politician elected to the California state legislature, speaks during a luncheon in Artesia, California, U.S., June 8, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File photo California Rep. Dr. Jasmeet Bains greets Jasbir Kaur, president of the American Sikh Council, before a lunch meeting in Artesia, California, U.S., June 8, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File photo California Assemblywoman Dr. Jasmeet Bains, the first Sikh-American politician elected to the California state legislature, poses for a photo with fellow Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva during a luncheon meeting in Artesia, California, U.S., June 8, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File photo