In what can be blown up as an embarrassing diplomatic issue, it has now been revealed that the Indian Government was involved in plotting a conspiracy to assassinate Sikh separatists on American soil.
This international scoop unveiled by Financial Times says US authorities thwarted a conspiracy to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American and Canadian citizen who is general counsel for Sikhs for Justice, a US-based group that is part of a movement pushing for Khalistan. India is against the formation of Khalisatan.
Details about how the plot was foiled has not yet been revealed in detail, but the Financial Times report clearly says that the Indian government has been “warned” about it since it was involved in the assassination conspiracy.
A Khalistani leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who lived in Canada, was killed in June in Vancouver. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had later said there were credible allegations linking New Delhi, that is the Indian Government, with Nijjar’s killing.
Pannun is the man who recently had issued a warning through a video saying Sikhs should not fly on Air India as it could be life-threatening, indicating some major incident.
During a visit to Washington in September, Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar told a Hudson Institute event that Canada had a “very permissive” attitude towards Sikh separatists.
The Khalistan movement is a separatist movement seeking to create a homeland for Sikhs by establishing an ethno-religious sovereign state called Khalistan. This proposed Khalistan claims to include the Pakistani area of Punjab besides Chandigarh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh of India as its territories. In the 80’s Operation Blue Star, a military operation was ordered by then Indian PM Indira Gandhi between 1 and 8 June 1984, to remove militant religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindaranwale and his armed followers from the buildings of the Harmandir complex (aka the Golden Temple) in Amritsar, Punjab–the most sacred site in Sikhism.
That very year, within four months, PM Indira Gandhi was assassinated in her official prime ministerial residence by her two personal security guards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, both Sikhs, in retaliation for Operation Blue Star. The assassination triggered the anti-Sikh riots.
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