#sikh news canada

[allthecanadianpolitics]

An Ontario hospital network says it will conduct an "extensive review" of an incident in which an elderly Sikh patient was shaved last month without permission from him or his family and in violation of his religious principles. According to the World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO), a non-profit organization that represents Sikhs in Canada, staff at Brampton Civic Hospital shaved Joginder Singh Kaler, 85, a patient who is a practising Sikh, on either Aug. 28 or 29 "in violation of his religious principles and personal dignity." Kaler had never shaved or cut his beard in his life before this incident, the organization said. The WSO said Kaler was unconscious and could not provide consent himself. It said the hospital contacted Kaler's family to obtain permission to shave him but his family refused the request. 

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[wheniamamonster]

Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar was brazenly shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C. on June 18. Nijjar, a supporter of a Sikh homeland in the form of an independent Khalistani state, had been branded by the Indian government as a "terrorist" and accused of leading a militant separatist group — something his supporters have denied. "Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar," Trudeau said Monday in a speech to the House of Commons. "Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty."

Tagging @allthecanadianpolitics

[memenewsdotcom]

#India #Canada tensions rise

[mspiggy]

all the americans i follow talking about their election has me thinking about the next canadian election (coming 2025)... god i wish white canadians weren't some of the most insidiously racist and xenophobic people in the world so all the former liberal voters frustrated with trudeau would vote NDP instead... but i know they're gonna throw their support behind canada's biggest most racist cardboard cut-out, also known as "pierre polievre"

[head-post]

Sikh community protests against India over leader’s killing

A week after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a possible link between New Delhi and the killing of a Sikh separatist supporter in British Columbia, Canadian Sikhs organised protests outside Indian diplomatic missions.

A week ago at a speech in Parliament, Trudeau said domestic intelligence agencies were actively working on credible allegations linking New Delhi agents to the murder of 45-year-old Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June this year.

About 200 protesters gathered outside the consulate in Vancouver. In Toronto, more than 100 protesters burned an Indian flag and kicked a cardboard cutout of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a shoe.

Learn more HERE

[propicsmedia]

09-09-24 - $12m investment for Canada Sikhs - Sikh Exodus - Sikh student... New Episode of PERSPECTIVES Now Streaming 09-09-24 - $12m investment for Canada Sikhs - Sikh Exodus - Sikh student... https://youtu.be/xohHfsLCn5M?si=sHG0Ee54iwkiam70 via @YouTube #perspectives #jagmeetsingh #ndpAngus Scott & James Cousineau's European & Canadian perspective on the big stories making the news relevant to the Sikh community. Today we cover: 00:00  Introduction 01:00  Canada to invest $12m+ in Sikh history & culture 07:14  Sikh student killed in Edmonton 16:01  Sikhs fleeing Punjab to USA 38:17  RSS-generated hatred & division appearing across India 45:43  Your Comments   #perspectives #jagmeetsingh #ndp #sikhexodus #India #worldnews #internationalnews #news #breakingnews #globalnews #headlinestoday #newsheadlines #uknews #satlujtv #satlujnetwork #satlujnews #punjab #punjabnews #punjabimedia #sikhnews #sikhdiaspora #sikhsinusa #akalidal #bjp #indiannationalcongress #sarbatkhalsa #akaltakhat #canada #sikhsincanada #humanrights #amnestyinternational #humanrights #politics #indianpolitics #worldpolitics #sikhstruggle #malerkotla #jashandeepsinghmann #edgarwesker #edmonton #jashansinghmann #TimHorons @TimHortons #TimHortonsemployee #foreignstudent #internationalstudent

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Mark Leier recounts the story of Robert Gosden, a radical activist in the BC Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) who later turned labour spy and whose life illustrates some of this flexibility [between socialism and religion]. Although Leier does not say so, Gosden very probably disavowed Christianity during his IWW period, as most radical IWW leaders did. Leier is certainly clear that Gosden was a materialist at this time, and in 1911 he dismissed spiritualism as “metaphysical dope [that] especially appeals to some emasculated persons.” Like many socialists, Gosden denounced any association with spirituality as effeminate weakness. However, a few years later, after a stint as a labour spy, when Gosden was “nearly forty years old, with no career, stable job, or home life,” he turned to spiritualism and “became particularly interested in Theosophy.”

Theosophy had emerged from spiritualism during the 1870s but was quite different in many ways. Even so, the two movements did maintain some relationship with each other, and in the United States, Britain, and Canada a number of people, especially social activists, feminists, intellectuals, and artists, appear to have moved from spiritualism to Theosophy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Theosophy espoused the Western occult tradition but was also influenced by many ideas from Eastern religions – Buddhism and most particularly Hinduism. As a result, karma and reincarnation were integral to its beliefs, and cremation, a Hindu practice, was common among Theosophists at a time when it was beyond the pale for most Euro-Canadians. As Gillian McCann reveals in her study of the Toronto Theosophical Society, the adoption of many major tenets of Hinduism led Theosophists to respect and appreciate Eastern religions. They were very critical of the Christian missionaries who attempted to convert the followers of these religions. They were not immune to the “Orientalism” that pervaded Euro-Canadian society, however, and they sometimes viewed Eastern religions and cultures as exotic “others,” but they were much more positive than other Canadians about these religions and were generally respectful of the South Asians who occasionally provided lectures on links between Hindu teachings and Theosophical beliefs.

The intent of Theosophy was to reach a deeper understanding of the divine. As Michele Lacombe points out, Theosophists believed in “a divinity indistinguishable from a Universe which is living, conscious, and endlessly evolving.” This evolution moved toward a positive endpoint, which included the brotherhood of mankind. Not all Theosophists subscribed to the same views, but a belief in the interconnectedness of the world and in universal brotherhood was central for all. During the early twentieth century, Canada had few Theosophists (at least as listed on the census), but between 1901 and 1921 more than 30 percent lived in British Columbia, and the province claimed over 35 percent in 1911 and 1921, although even by 1921 British Columbians composed only 6 percent of the Canadian population.

Theosophy made its first official appearance in British Columbia in 1892, with the establishment of a “headquarters” in downtown Victoria. By 1894, this headquarters was also equipped with a free library of Theosophical books. The Victoria chapter seems to have been one of Canada’s first three Theosophical Societies. The Theosophists offered regular public lectures, provided by their own members or visiting speakers, and though their numbers were small, the new religion appears to have aroused considerable public interest. Sometimes the local paper noted that their talks attracted large audiences, as in the case of visiting speakers Dr. Griffith and Sidney Coryn, whose 1896 and 1898 lectures were titled “Theosophy in Ancient Egypt” and “Adepts and the Mysteries of Antiquity. In the spring of 1911, Mr. C. Jinarajadasa, a protégé of international Theosophical leader Annie Besant and a member of the executive of the International Theosophical Society, gave a series of three lectures in Victoria titled “The Growth and Evolution of the Soul,” “Theosophy in the Christian Church,” and “The Laws of Reincarnation.” After his lectures, a letter appeared in the Victoria Colonist from a local Sikh leader, protesting the fact that even Hindus “of good social standing” like Jinarajadasa had difficulty entering the country because of its racist immigration laws. Jinarajadasa was not the only Theosophist lecturer to discuss the relationship between Christianity and Theosophy, as this was an occasional topic at the Victoria Theosophical Society’s public lectures in the decades preceding the First World War. Titles such as “What Is True Christianity?” and “Some Forgotten Teachings of Jesus” imply that Theosophists hoped to interest Christians in shared Theosophical and Christian beliefs such as universal brotherhood – beliefs that they felt many Christians failed to practise.

...

Theosophy’s focus on the brotherhood of man and the amalgamation of Eastern and Western religious beliefs led at least some Canadian Theosophists to follow the example of their international leaders, such as Annie Besant, in attacking racism and British imperialism. Not surprisingly, this critique tended to concentrate on the behaviour of the British government and Christian missionaries in India, although in the Canadian context considerable focus was also placed on Canada’s racist immigration and citizenship laws. Hugh Johnston points out that both this critique and the adoption of Hindu beliefs forged links between BC Theosophists and at least a few South Asian immigrants, who were themselves highly critical of both Canada’s immigration laws and British rule in India. Johnston discusses Teja Singh, a well-educated and pious Sikh immigrant who was planning to undertake graduate work at Harvard and who spent some time in Vancouver during the pre-war years. Local Theosophists lionized him, “treating him as a guru and inviting him to their homes for intimate philosophical talks.” Canadian security officials considered Singh a subversive at least in part for his efforts to assist his compatriots in dealing with Canada’s racist immigration laws. Gillian McCann identifies another South Asian man, Kartar Singh, who immigrated to Vancouver during the pre-war years, moved to Toronto during the war, and became involved with the Toronto Theosophists. He returned to Vancouver in the late 1920s to assist the BC Sikhs in their struggle to become Canadian citizens.

Johnston also mentions another Sikh immigrant, Kapoor Singh, who was associated with the Theosophists. Singh came to British Columbia in 1912 as a labourer and became a businessman and community leader, developing increasingly close links with Theosophists in both Toronto and Vancouver. He was initially attracted to them because of their respect for Indian religious traditions and beliefs. Some Euro-Canadian Theosophists assisted South Asians in dealing with a racist society wherever they could, and by the interwar period were actively involved with them in challenging Canada’s immigration laws. Some Theosophists studied and practised their religion with the despised “Hindus” while also working to address their oppression in Canada, but the new religion was not socially transformative for everyone. Some Toronto Theosophists, who could not escape the values of Euro-Canadian society, treated visiting South Asian speakers in a highly racist manner.

Whereas some Theosophists challenged racial oppression or fought for women’s rights, others were strong socialists. Robert Gosden, although a complex figure by the time he embraced spiritualism and then Theosophy in the mid- to late 1910s, retained at least some of his socialist ideals. Perhaps the most famous BC activist to incorporate both socialist and Theosophist ideals in the years before the First World War was Matti Kurikka, the leader of Sointula, a Finnish socialist utopian community on Malcolm Island, just off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. The extent to which the Sointula community accepted Kurikka’s Theosophical beliefs is not clear. Certainly, his embrace of the free-love currents of Theosophical thought helped to break up the community fairly soon after its founding. Those who remained, however, stayed true to socialist, cooperative beliefs but seemed more irreligious than Theosophist. As a longtime resident told Imbert Orchard in the 1960s, long-time inhabitants of Sointula “were all pretty against” the church and Christianity.

Most scholars have focused on the relationship between socialism and Theosophy in Ontario, whereas Samuel Wagar provides an in-depth exploration of the subject in the BC context. He concentrates largely on the 1920s, when active socialist and Theosophist Jack Logie ran a number of summer camps in the Okanagan that promoted both Theosophist and socialist beliefs. However, Wagar also identifies earlier links between socialism and Theosophy, arguing that materialism was not the only model available to BC socialists, since a number of prominent socialists espoused Theosophy. Wagar discusses a major front-page article titled “Socialism and Theosophy,” which appeared in the April 1903 issue of the Western Socialist, an organ of the Socialist Party of British Columbia. It was written by Phillips Thompson, an Ontario Theosophist and well-known leftist, whose career reflects an ongoing spiritual journey. In the 1880s, Thompson had promoted a radical Christian social gospel critique of capitalism, and later in the century he became involved in spiritualism. He was also an active member of Toronto’s freethought community for a time but had embraced Theosophy by the early 1890s, which he saw as the best way of integrating spirituality with socialism. As he told Western Socialist readers,

I am a class-conscious Socialist from the ground up, and I claim that my Socialism is reinforced by [Theosophy]; in fact, I might go further and say based upon the truths of Theosophy.

Thompson was clear that he did not accept Christianity, but at the same time, his article was rather different from the general hostility to religion that characterized Marxist journals in British Columbia. Wagar notes that in 1907, Jack Logie ran as a candidate for office in the Socialist Party of Canada, although he does not provide evidence that Logie was a Theosophist at the time. He has clear evidence that by 1920 some individuals combined Theosophy and socialism: for example, socialist James Taylor was also president of the Vancouver Theosophical Society in 1920, and A.M. Stephen, president of the Julian Theosophical Society in Vancouver during the early 1920s, was also a committed Marxist and a well-known author and poet. Those who integrated Theosophy and socialism were able to abandon a capitalist-tainted Christianity but retain a spiritual belief system that focused on human betterment and the brotherhood of man."

- Lynne Marks, Infidels and the Damn Churches: Irreligion and Religion in Settler British Columbia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017. p. 197-199, 203-205

[aarifboy]

Justin Trudeau Speech on Indian Involvement in Terrorist Activity Inside...

[brexiiton]

Trudeau accuses India's government of involvement in killing of Canadian Sikh leader

By CNN, 1:16pm Sep 19, 2023

Canada has expelled a top Indian diplomat from the country after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described "credible allegations" linking India's government to the assassination of a Canadian citizen and prominent Sikh leader.

"Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar," Trudeau said in parliament on Monday.

He added his government would take all steps necessary "to hold perpetrators of this murder to account".

Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told MPs there were "credible allegations" linking the Indian government to the killing of a Sikh leader on Canadian soil. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)(AP)

Nijjar was a prominent Sikh leader in British Columbia, and according to local police, he was gunned down in his truck in June by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, BC.

His death both shocked and outraged the large Sikh community in Canada that now numbers in the hundreds of thousands

India designated Nijjar a terrorist threat several years ago, labelling him part of a separatist movement for Sikhism.

The Indian diplomat's expulsion was confirmed by Canada's foreign affairs minister, Melanie Joly, who also confirmed that the individual is the head of the Indian intelligence agency in Canada.

"Today we're acting by expelling a key diplomat, but we will get to the bottom of this," she said in Ottawa.

Trudeau also said on Monday that he had brought Canada's concerns over the assassination "personally and directly" to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week at the G20 meeting.

Mourners carry the casket of Sikh community leader and temple president Hardeep Singh Nijjar during a funeral service in British Columbia on June 25, 2023. (AP)

"Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty," he said.

Canadian police have not arrested anyone in connection with Nijjar's murder, but in an August update, police released a statement saying they were now investigating three possible suspects and issued a description of a possible getaway vehicle, asking for the public's help.

CNN has reached out to the High Commission of India in Ottawa for comment has not received a reply.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canadian police said they arrested three suspects Friday in the slaying of a Sikh separatist leader last June that become the center of a diplomatic spat with India, and are investigating possible ties between the detainees and the Indian government. Three Indian nationals in their 20s identified as Kamalpreet Singh, Karan Brar and Karampreet Singh were arrested in Edmonton, Alberta on Friday morning in the slaying of 45-year-old Hardeep Singh Nijjar by masked gunmen outside Vancouver, police said. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparked a diplomatic feud with India in September when he said that there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement in the slaying of Nijjar. India had accused Nijjar of links to terrorism, but angrily denied involvement in the slaying. In response to the allegatio ns, India told Canada last year to remove 41 of its 62 diplomats in the country. Tensions remain but have somewhat eased since.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[lunaryugamine]

I decided to do this edit because someone on twitter did one, and I thought it'd be fun. Was it? Sort of. Here's the original edit.

Artists under the cut and in the reblog because you can only have 100 links on a page on tumblr I guess.

United States (Cherokee)- pinkcultgirl

Canada (Cree)- lacking-rodents

Mexico- strxbxrrylxvxr

Panama- tiffycat

Haiti- sumechiayuu

Jamaica- risarts

Peru- kotorinrins

Dominican Republic- pls-explodingstars-pls

Cuba- skronklpus

Caribbean(Guadalupe)- majartsy

Greenland (Inuit)- probablymoons

El Salvador- chiliger

Puerto Rico- lavendett

Colombia- mary-92023

Venezuela- hand-painted-5tars

Honduras- nicotine-boi

Guyana- astrumnm on twitter

Guatamala- sadsquatch-art

Bolivia- by-peachy

Argentina- mypillowpaper

Ecuador- astrid-nyan

Chile- jet-set-go-go

Brazil- garden-variety-jumo

Costa Rica- astroskatcher

Belize- jovialodyssey

Nicaragua- sirnatsketches

Bahamas- artbounddude

Trinidad and Tobago- donutsbagels

San Juan (Puerto Rico)- lazycatartist6

Paraguay- 2funk

Uruguay- clayscence

Suriname- yumiaoi5

French Guiana- myballsitchaurghouchie

Barbados- parkbomdotcom on twitter

Guam- grumfield

Norway- parti-poppers

Sweden- rubenthecatisstupid

Iceland- catastrophe-of-clovers

Finland- antony-art

Germany- mangos-draws

Switzerland- graegrape-art

Austria- qwaxi2o8

Czech Republic- miroslav-hashlerka

Italy- mspaint-flower

Turkey (Kurdish)- bubblbudd

Greece- albinobirb

Poland- thirea

Romania- eternalblizzards

Scotland- laplaces-angel

Albania- isaaa-usb

Ireland- can-of-w0rmz

Russia- bdsmchan

Bulgaria- pastellbg

Saudi Arabia- chiroomii on twitter

Hungary- sidecast

Cyprus- diadoesart

Iraq- coloursdraws

Iran- witchydespoina

Syria- rozeliyawashereyall

Lebanon- erebusbored

Israel (Palestine)- langel2

Jordan- guitoneangel on twitter

Yemen- adenlicpng

Kuwait- obscurecrows

Bahrain- Beautifulnoora on twitter

The Netherlands- fayzart136

Belgium- nousanti

Portugal- m4rlol

France- izkph

England- cyclqnes

Denmark- mariehyde

Spain- annomalysstuff

India (Sikh)- starkitten101

Pakistan- ayzaart

Burma/Myanmar- artsyvamp

Afghanistan- ahriana

Thailand- fumiruku

Nepal- astronite13

Bhutan- orobeori

Kampuchea (Cambodia)- othercrossee

Malaysia- roobiedo

Bangladesh- maleficauraa

China (Uygher)- chronically-ill-psionipath

Korea- iyuray

Mongolia- kenvamp

Laos- justgoji

Tibet- saunabun on twitter

Indonesia- moonieee

Phillipines- puppyeared

Taiwan- huyi-hotdog

Sri Lanka- crabs-brencil

Papua New Guinea- Penmastery28600 on twitter

New Zealand- beastwhimsy

Vietnam- sparkly-s0da

Tunisia- cs34

Morocco- sx1ro

Uganda- moonjumps

Angola- PeepawRichter on twitter

Zimbabwe- jxmuu-nat

[andmaybegayer]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/29/india-assassination-raw-sikhs-modi/

cool cool cool

(full text below the cut)

An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi’s India

Greg Miller, Gerry Shih, Ellen Nakashima

The White House went to extraordinary lengths last year to welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a state visit meant to bolster ties with an ascendant power and potential partner against China.

Tables on the South Lawn were decorated with lotus blooms, the symbol of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. A chef was flown in from California to preside over a vegetarian menu. President Biden extolled the shared values of a relationship “built on mutual trust, candor and respect.”

But even as the Indian leader was basking in U.S. adulation on June 22, an officer in India’s intelligence service was relaying final instructions to a hired hit team to kill one of Modi’s most vocal critics in the United States.

The assassination is a “priority now,” wrote Vikram Yadav, an officer in India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, according to current and former U.S. and Indian security officials.

Yadav forwarded details about the target, Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, including his New York address, according to the officials and a U.S. indictment. As soon as the would-be assassins could confirm that Pannun, a U.S. citizen, was home, “it will be a go ahead from us.”

Yadav’s identity and affiliation, which have not previously been reported, provide the most explicit evidence to date that the assassination plan — ultimately thwarted by U.S. authorities — was directed from within the Indian spy service. Higher-ranking RAW officials have also been implicated, according to current and former Western security officials, as part of a sprawling investigation by the CIA, FBI and other agencies that has mapped potential links to Modi’s inner circle.

In reports that have been closely held within the American government, U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that the operation targeting Pannun was approved by the RAW chief at the time, Samant Goel. That finding is consistent with accounts provided to The Washington Post by former senior Indian security officials who had knowledge of the operation and said Goel was under extreme pressure to eliminate the alleged threat of Sikh extremists overseas. U.S. spy agencies have more tentatively assessed that Modi’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, was probably aware of RAW’s plans to kill Sikh activists, but officials emphasized that no smoking gun proof has emerged.

Neither Doval nor Goel responded to calls and text messages seeking comment.

This examination of Indian assassination plots in North America, and RAW’s increasingly aggressive global posture, is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former senior officials in the United States, India, Canada, Britain, Germany and Australia. Citing security concerns and the sensitivity of the subject, most spoke on the condition of anonymity.

That India would pursue lethal operations in North America has stunned Western security officials. In some ways, however, it reflects a profound shift in geopolitics. After years of being treated as a second-tier player, India sees itself as a rising force in a new era of global competition, one that even the United States cannot afford to alienate.

Asked why India would risk attempting an assassination on U.S. soil, a Western security official said: “Because they knew they could get away with it.”

The foiled assassination was part of an escalating campaign of aggression by RAW against the Indian diaspora in Asia, Europe and North America, officials said. The plot in the United States coincided with the June 18 shooting death of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., near Vancouver — an operation also linked to Yadav, according to Western officials. Both plots took place amid a wave of violence in Pakistan, where at least 11 Sikh or Kashmiri separatists living in exile and labeled terrorists by the Modi government have been killed over the past two years.

The Indian intelligence service has ramped up its surveillance and harassment of Sikhs and other groups overseas perceived as disloyal to the Modi government, officials said. RAW officers and agents have faced arrest, expulsion and reprimand in countries including Australia, Germany and Britain, according to officials who provided details to The Post that have not previously been made public.

The revelations have added to Western concerns about Modi, whose tenure has been marked by economic growth and rising global stature for India, but also deepening authoritarianism. A recent report by Freedom House, a human rights organization, listed India among the world’s practitioners of “transnational repression,” a term for governments’ use of intimidation or violence against their own citizens — dissidents, activists, journalists — in others’ sovereign territory.

India is part of an expanding roster of countries employing tactics previously associated with China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes. It is a trend fueled by factors ranging from surging strains of nationalism and authoritarianism to the spread of social media and spyware that both empower and endanger dissident groups.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to respond to detailed questions submitted by The Post or provide comment for this article. Responding to questions raised by a Post reporter at a news briefing last week, spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said that India was still investigating the allegations and that the Pannun case “equally impacts our national security.”

Jaiswal referred reporters to previous ministry statements that targeted killings are “not our policy.”

For the Biden administration, which has spent three years cultivating closer ties with India, the assassination plots have pitted professed values against strategic interests.

Last July, White House officials began holding high-level meetings to discuss ways to respond without risking a wider rupture with India, officials said. CIA Director William J. Burns and others have been deployed to confront officials in the Modi government and demand accountability. But the United States has so far imposed no expulsions, sanctions or other penalties.

Even the U.S. criminal case reflects this restraint. Senior officials at the Justice Department and FBI had pushed to prosecute Yadav, officials said, a step that would have implicated RAW in a murder-for-hire conspiracy. But while a U.S. indictment unsealed in November contained the bombshell allegation that the plot was directed by an Indian official, it referred to Yadav as only an unnamed co-conspirator, “CC-1,” and made no mention of the Indian spy agency.

Justice Department officials who took part in the White House deliberations sided against those urging criminal charges against Yadav. Administration officials denied any undue influence. “Charging decisions are the prerogative of law enforcement alone,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, “and the Biden NSC has rigorously respected that independence.”

The only U.S. charges made public to date are against an alleged middleman, Nikhil Gupta, who is described in the indictment as an Indian drug and weapons trafficker enlisted to hire a contract killer. Gupta, an Indian national who has denied the charges, was arrested in Prague on June 30 and remains in prison. He is awaiting a Czech court ruling on a U.S. request for his extradition.

Even in recent days, the Biden administration has taken steps to contain the fallout from the assassination plot. White House officials warned the Modi government this month that The Post was close to publishing an investigation that would reveal new details about the case. It did so without notifying The Post.

Laying a trap

For decades, RAW was regarded as a regional player, preoccupied by proxy wars with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. Under Modi, however, RAW has been wielded as a weapon against dissidents in India’s vast global diaspora, according to current and former U.S. and Indian officials.

The U.S. operation shows how RAW tried to export tactics it has used for years in countries neighboring India, officials said, including the use of criminal syndicates for operations it doesn’t want traced to New Delhi. It also exposed what former Indian security officials described as disturbing lapses in judgment and tradecraft.

After the plot against Pannun failed, the decision to entrust Yadav with the high-risk mission sparked recriminations within the agency, former officials said. Rather than joining RAW as a junior officer, Yadav had been brought in midcareer from India’s less prestigious Central Reserve Police Force, said one former official. As a result, the official said, Yadav lacked training and skills needed for an operation that meant going up against sophisticated U.S. counterintelligence capabilities.

Attempts by The Post to locate or contact Yadav were unsuccessful. A former Indian security official said he was transferred back to the Central Reserve Police Force after the Pannun plot unraveled.

The U.S. affidavit describes Yadav as an “associate” of Gupta who procured the alleged drug trafficker’s help by arranging for the dismissal of criminal charges he faced in India. Gupta had a history of collaborating with India’s security services on operations in Afghanistan and other countries, according to a person with knowledge of his background, but he had never been used for jobs in the West.

Petr Slepicka, a lawyer in Prague who represents Gupta, declined to comment on the case except to say that his client denies the charges against him. In court filings in India, Gupta’s family members described him as an innocent “middle-class businessman” whose arrest was a case of mistaken identity. They said he traveled to Prague “for tourism” and to explore new markets for a “handicraft” business, according to the court filings.

Yadav and Gupta spent weeks trading encrypted texts about the plot to kill Pannun, according to a U.S. affidavit filed in support of the request for Gupta’s extradition. To find a willing assassin, Gupta reached out to someone he had been in touch with for at least eight years and understood to be a drug and weapons dealer. In reality, according to the affidavit, the supposed dealer was an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The two were discussing “another potential firearms and narcotics transaction,” according to the affidavit when, on May 30, Gupta abruptly asked “about the possibility of hiring someone to murder a lawyer living in New York.”

From that moment, U.S. agents had an inside but incomplete view of the unfolding conspiracy. They orchestrated Gupta’s introduction to a supposed assassin who was actually an undercover agent, according to court filings. They captured images of cash changing hands in a car in New York City — a $15,000 down payment on a job that was to cost $100,000 when completed.

At one point, the indictment said, U.S. agents even got footage of Gupta turning his camera toward three men “dressed in business attire, sitting around a conference room,” an apparent reference to Indian operatives overseeing the mission. “We are all counting on you,” Gupta told the purported assassin on the video call, according to the indictment.

Yadav indicated that there would be more jobs after Pannun, including one “big target” in Canada. But a separate hit team got to that assignment first, according to the U.S. indictment, suggesting that RAW was working with multiple criminal elements.

Hours after Nijjar was gunned down in his car on June 18 outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, Yadav sent a video clip to Gupta “showing Nijjar’s bloody body slumped in his vehicle,” according to the indictment.

The message arrived as U.S. authorities were laying a trap for Gupta. Seeking to draw him out of India and into a friendly jurisdiction, U.S. agents used their DEA informant to persuade Gupta to travel to the Czech Republic for what he was led to believe would be a clandestine meeting with his American contact, according to officials familiar with the operation.

Gupta arrived in Prague on June 30 — 11 days after Czech authorities, acting at the behest of U.S. officials, had secretly issued an arrest warrant for him.

As he exited Vaclav Havel Airport, Gupta was intercepted by Czech police, who ushered him into a vehicle in which two U.S. federal agents were waiting, according to court filings submitted by Gupta’s family in India. He was questioned for hours while the car meandered around the city. His laptop was seized and his phone held to his face to unlock it, according to the family petition.

Gupta was eventually deposited in Prague’s Pankrac Prison, where he remains awaiting possible extradition. Seeking help, Gupta’s family tried to reach Yadav last year but could find no trace of him, according to a person familiar with the matter. After months of near-constant contact with Gupta, the person said, CC-1 had “disappeared.”

Engaging with the underworld

Though Yadav served as RAW’s point man, current and former officials said the operation involved higher-ranking officials with ties to Modi’s inner circle. Among those suspected of involvement or awareness are Goel and Doval, though U.S. officials said there is no direct evidence so far of their complicity.

As RAW chief at the time, Goel was “under pressure” to neutralize the alleged threat posed by Sikh extremists overseas, said a former Indian security official. Goel reported to Doval, and had ties to the hard-line national security adviser going back decades.

Both had built their reputations in the 1980s, when the country’s security services battled Sikh separatists and Muslim militants. They were part of a generation of security professionals shaped by those conflicts much the way their U.S. counterparts came to be defined by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Doval, 79, has claimed roles in undercover missions from the jungles of Myanmar to the back alleys of Lahore, Pakistan — tales that contributed to his frequent depiction in the press as the “James Bond of India.”

He also exhibited a willingness to engage with the criminal underworld. In 2005, after retiring as head of India’s domestic intelligence service, he was inadvertently detained by Mumbai police while meeting with a reputed gangster. Doval was seeking to enlist one crime boss to assassinate another, according to media reports later confirmed by senior Indian officials.

Before being tapped as national security adviser by Modi in 2014, Doval publicly called for India’s security apparatus to shift from “defense” to “defensive offense” against groups threatening India from other countries, especially Pakistan.

Goel, who was then rising into the senior ranks at RAW, shared Doval’s instincts. Police forces under Goel’s command in the early 1990s were tied to more than 120 cases of alleged extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances or torture, according to a database maintained by Ensaaf, an Indian human rights group based in the United States. Goel was so closely associated with the brutal crackdown that he became an assassination target, according to associates who said he took to traveling in a bulletproof vehicle.

Former Indian officials who know both men said Goel would not have proceeded with assassination plots in North America without the approval of his superior and protector.

“We always had to go to the NSA for clearance for any operations,” said A.S. Dulat, who served as RAW chief in the early 2000s, referring to the national security adviser. Dulat emphasized in an interview with The Post that he did not have inside knowledge of the alleged operations, and that assassinations were not part of RAW’s repertoire during his tenure.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reached a similar conclusion. Given Doval’s reputation and the hierarchical nature of the Indian system, CIA analysts have assessed that Doval probably knew of or approved RAW’s plans to kill Sikhs his government considered terrorists, U.S. officials said.

A fierce crackdown

India’s shift to “defensive offense” was followed by a series of clashes between RAW and Western domestic security services.

In Australia, two RAW officers were expelled in 2020 after authorities broke up what Mike Burgess, head of the Australian intelligence service, described as a “nest of spies.”

Foreign officers were caught monitoring “their country’s diaspora community,” trying to penetrate local police departments and stealing information about sensitive security systems at Australian airports, Burgess said in a 2021 speech. He didn’t name the service, but Australian officials confirmed to The Post that it was RAW.

In Germany, federal police have made arrests in recent years to root out agents RAW had recruited within Sikh communities. Among them, German officials said, were a husband and wife who operated a website purportedly covering local Sikh events but who were secretly on RAW’s payroll.

In Britain, RAW’s surveillance and harassment of the Sikh population — especially a large concentration near Birmingham — became so egregious in 2014 and 2015 that MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, delivered warnings to Goel, who was then serving as RAW’s station chief in London.

When confronted, Goel scoffed at his counterparts and accused them of coddling Sikh activists he said should be considered terrorists, according to current and former British officials. After further run-ins, British authorities threatened to expel him, officials said. Instead, Goel returned to New Delhi and continued to climb RAW’s ranks until, in 2019, he was given the agency’s top job.

RAW’s record of aggressive activity in Britain has fanned suspicion that the agency was involved in the death of Sikh activist Avtar Singh Khanda, who died in Birmingham last year, three days before Nijjar was killed in Canada. British officials have said Khanda suffered from leukemia and died of natural causes, though his family and supporters have continued to press for further investigation.

A U.S. State Department human rights report released this month catalogued India’s alleged engagement in transnational repression. It cited credible accounts of “extraterritorial killing, kidnapping, forced returns or other violence,” as well as “threats, harassment, arbitrary surveillance and coercion” of overseas dissidents and journalists.

RAW’s operations in Western countries during Modi’s tenure have been overwhelmingly aimed at followers of the Sikh religion, especially a minority faction seeking to revive the largely dormant cause of creating a separate state called “Khalistan.”

That movement had peaked in the 1980s, when thousands were killed in violent skirmishes between the Indian government and Sikh insurgents. One brutal sequence beginning in 1984 included an Indian assault on the Sikh religion’s holiest site, the Golden Temple; the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikhs in her security detail; and the bombing of an Air India flight widely attributed to Sikh extremists. A fierce crackdown quashed the insurgency, prompting an exodus of Sikhs to diaspora communities in Canada, the United States and Britain.

As Sikhs settled into their new lives abroad, the Khalistani cause went quiet until a new generation of activists — whose leaders included Pannun and Nijjar — sought to rekindle the movement with unofficial referendums on Sikh statehood and with protests that at times have seemed to glorify violence. A parade in Canada last year included a float depicting Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and Khalistan supporters have stormed and defaced Indian diplomatic facilities in Western cities.

The effort has seemed to gain little traction beyond a minority within the diaspora communit

[zvaigzdelasas]

29 Nov 23

[head-post]

India resumes e-visa services for Canadians

India resumed issuing e-visas to Canadian tourists and business travellers on Wednesday.

India issues e-visas to Canadian citizens only for tourism and business. This comes a month after New Delhi resumed issuing visas in 4 of the 13 categories suspended in September.

Relations between India and Canada deteriorated after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canada’s parliament that his government was “actively investigating credible allegations” linking Indian government agents to the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, in a Vancouver suburb. Nijjar was one of the proponents of a decades-long but now secondary demand for an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan to be spun off from India.

Learn more HERE

[propicsmedia]

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