India continues plot to assassinate Sikhs: Brampton activist warned of imminent danger

"I would rather take the bullet than stop and hide from campaigning.”

Those were the harrowing words of defiance uttered by Brampton Sikh activist Inderjeet Singh Gosal. 

The RCMP warned him last week of an imminent threat to his life, urging him to enter the witness protection program. The alarming news came more than a year after the RCMP first warned Gosal of threats against his life linked to the Indian government. 

According to Gosal, he met with the RCMP “eight to nine times” between August 20 and September 10. The meeting on September 10 marked the first escalation, with officers urging him to accept new measures to protect himself. 

“They officially asked me, ‘It's gone to a whole other level now, the only way we can protect you is if you go into witness protection,’” Gosal shared with The Pointer. 

He refused to accept police protection. 

He is coordinator of the Khalistan referendum in Canada— part of a global movement scheduled for November 23 in this country, when a non-binding vote will be held to determine support for an independent Sikh state, known as Khalistan, in Punjab, the majority-Sikh state in the northwest area of India. Due to the responsibilities on his shoulders Gosal declined the RCMP’s offer to place him in a protection program.

 Inderjeet Singh Gosal, centre, was informed by police in August 2024 under an RCMP duty to warn mandate that the Indian government might be targeting him due to his Sikh activism. The national police agency is now urging him to enter a protection program.

(Sikhs for Justice)

"I know what I signed up for," Gosal said. "I respectfully declined. As the head coordinator of the Khalistan referendum, I need to do a lot of on-the-ground work, and I won't be able to do that sitting hidden."

He said nothing is going to keep him from his activism and advocating for Sikh autonomy.

"I understand the threat, but this is the cause of the campaign for the Khalistan referendum," he said.

Gosal also led the 2023 Khalistan referendum in Canada after the daylight assassination of his counterpart Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June of that year in Surrey, B.C.. 

Nijjar’s murder led to widespread acknowledgement of the efforts by India’s ruling BJP government—a Hindu-nationalist regime led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi—to silence leaders of India’s religious minority groups around the globe, particularly Sikhs and Muslims.

A stunning U.S. case that included unsealed evidence gathered by the American Department of Justice directly implicated the Indian government in the assassination of Mr. Nijjar and the attempted murder of another Canadian Sikh rights advocate based in New York who is also a Canadian citizen.   

The Washington Post published investigative stories that tie the widespread North American murder plot directly to the highest ranking members of India’s ruling BJP government.

Relations between Canada and India were damaged when former prime minister Justin Trudeau declared in Parliament that, according to RCMP evidence, the Indian government was behind the killing of Nijjar. 

Gosal was consistently the subject of the RCMP’s “duty to warn” mandate since the start of 2024, after bullets were fired at his construction site in Brampton last February.

He says the recent threats follow a pattern, which he attributes to Indian government agents.

"It's pretty much the same duty to warn that I received last year in August," Gosal said. "It's the same individuals, the same government, and like I said, it stems from the Indian government."

On October 14, 2024, the RCMP shared explosive information about investigations into the Indian government’s alleged involvement in assassination plots and other attacks against Sikh activists.

“We reached a point where we felt it was imperative to confront the government of India,” RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme said during a bombshell press conference when India’s involvement in organized crime targeting Sikh Canadians was outlined by the top brass of the Mounties.

“Links tying agents of the government of India to homicides and violent acts” and “the use of organized crime to create perception of unsafe environment targeting the South Asian community in Canada (specifically Sikhs advocating for more autonomy in India)” had been uncovered by the RCMP, Duheme announced. 

“Over the past few years, and more recently, law enforcement agencies in Canada, including the RCMP, have successfully investigated and charged a significant number of individuals for their direct involvement in homicides, extortions, and other criminal acts of violence,” senior RCMP officials revealed.

“In addition, there have been well over a dozen credible and imminent threats to life, which have led to the conduct of Duty to Warn by law enforcement with members of the South Asian community, and specifically members of the pro-Khalistan movement.”

The RCMP revealed the Indian government’s ties to Lawrence Bishnoi, a well-known Indian organized crime leader who has been in jail since 2014. Commissioner Duheme, who, alongside Assistant Commissioner Brigitte Gauvin, said the “Bishnoi gang” has connections to the Indian government and is involved in criminal acts, including alleged illicit activities against Sikh activists.

“I won’t be providing any further details in regard to the specificity of those investigations, but what we have seen from an RCMP perspective is the use of organized crime elements,” Gauvin detailed. “And I will say… It’s been publicly attributed and claimed by one organized crime group in particular, which is the Bishnoi group.”

“That’s what we are seeing here in Canada, and we believe that that group is connected to agents of the government of India,” she added.

In the wake of the most recent threats against Gosal, The Pointer reached out to the RCMP regarding the threats. No response was received ahead of publication.

The ongoing threats to Gosal’s life also shed light on previous alleged criminal actions across North America by the Modi-led Indian government to intimidate and harass Sikh leaders for their political activism.

The detailed evidence in the U.S. Justice Department’s 2023 indictment includes wiretap communications and other surveillance material, directly linking the Indian government to the assassination of Mr. Nijjar in Surrey in 2023 and a plot to kill Canadian-American dual citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the man who has led the global referendum movement to create an independent Sikh nation.

“The defendant, an Indian government employee, allegedly conspired with a criminal associate and attempted to assassinate a U.S. citizen on American soil for exercising their First Amendment rights,” former FBI Director Christopher Wray said in October last year, when the indictment was made public. 

Pannun is the leader of an organization called Sikhs for Justice and has led the global referendum movement, which saw Sikhs cast ballots in Canadian cities, including Brampton, last year. Nijjar was a close associate of Gosal and Pannun.

Sikh rights activist and dual Canadian-American citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun was the target of an assassination plot allegedly orchestrated by the Indian government.

(Supplied)

Another indictment filed by the U.S. Justice Department, published last year, included more details implicating the Indian government.

Murder-for-hire and money laundering charges were laid against Vikash Yadav, 39, an agent of the Indian government. It is alleged that he directed the thwarted attempt to assassinate Pannun in New York City.

The U.S. indictment, which was peppered with quotes from wiretap and other surveillance material, clearly linked Nijjar’s assassination with the Indian agent’s attempt to kill Pannun, offering a startling view into how the Indian intelligence operations unfolded. 

“Nijjar was an associate of the victim (the word used to describe Pannun throughout the unsealed document)... just hours after the Nijjar murder, YADAV sent GUPTA a video clip that showed Nijjar’s bloody body slumped in his (Nijjar’s) vehicle.”

Nijjar was described as one of the “targets” of the broader plot that involved Pannun. Nikhil Gupta is the man now in American custody after his extradition from the Czech Republic. He was allegedly hired by Yadav, the Indian government agent, to arrange the North American assassinations and was charged in June with murder-for-hire. Yadav, according to the indictment, arranged to have Indian criminal charges against Gupta wiped away in exchange for organizing assassinations in Canada and the U.S.

“The boss,” Yadav told Gupta, had cleared his criminal problems in India. “Nobody will ever bother you again,” the Indian government agent told Gupta, according to the surveillance transcripts in the indictment.

“We will be needing one good team in Canada,” Gupta then allegedly told one of the co-conspirators, describing Mr. Nijjar as a “big target” in Canada.

After receiving the video clip from Yadav showing Nijjar’s bloodied body in his car and instructions from the Indian agent to have Pannun killed immediately, Gupta, according to the surveillance material, told a hitman he hired that before June 29, 2023, “we have to finish four jobs,” Pannun’s assassination in the U.S., and "three in Canada.”

The Bishnoi gang, the organized crime syndicate allegedly tied to the Indian government, allegedly continues its criminal activities in Canada, ranging from extortion to killings.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has denied any Indian government involvement in the 2023 assassination of Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

(WikiCommons)

While Gosal refuses to disappear into witness protection, evidence continues to mount of the threats against Peel’s large Sikh-Canadian community members. 

In May, Harjeet Dhadda, a Brampton businessman, was killed in Mississauga after he refused to pay $500,000 demanded by extortionists. His killing sent shockwaves through the large Sikh community living in Peel.

The Bishnoi gang took responsibility for his murder.

According to media reports, Satish Kumar, a Surrey-based businessman, was the victim of similar extortion activities. He was asked to pay $2 million, and when he refused, his businesses were targeted by gunfire three times.

Gosal says nothing will stop him from pursuing what he believes is his mission to gather the views of fellow Sikhs regarding the creation of an independent nation.

"The campaigns have started; we will be traveling all over, getting the Sikh community to come out to vote on November 23 in Ottawa." 

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