‘Our community can’t afford more silence’: Sikhs targeted by Indian-backed criminal groups demand action

“It’s a slap on Canada’s sovereignty,” Bhagat Singh Brar, secretary of the Ontario Gurdwara Committee, said.

Sikh community members gathered in Brampton last weekend to express frustration during a town hall on December 7 at the Canadian Convention Centre, calling on stakeholders to hold India accountable for orchestrating transnational crime in Canada.

“The reason we needed to organize this town hall and gather all of Canada’s largest Sikh advocacy organizations and institutions is because of the increasing trust deficit between the community and the government,” Parabjot Singh, legal counsel with the Sikh Federation of Canada, said.

“We know that the root of the violence that impacted our communities originates in India. This isn’t a law-and-order issue or a regional issue; it's a national security issue.”

Cases of extortion, shootings and intimidation against the Sikh community have been increasing in Peel and across Canada, leading the coalition of Sikh organizations—including the World Sikh Organization of Canada, the Sikh Federation, the BC Gurdwaras Council and Ontario Gurdwaras Committee—to launch a series of town halls, which started in Brampton on Sunday. Future meetings are planned in Calgary on December 13 and Surrey, B.C. on December 14. Under the banner of “Confronting the Threat” the coalition is demanding elected officials and law enforcement address the “Indian-government linked networks” operating in Canada and perpetrating these crimes against Sikhs. 

“Why do our lives seem to matter less?” Balpreet Singh Boparai, legal counsel at the World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO), asked during the meeting.

Peel Police officials, including Chief Nishan Duraiappah, and Brampton MPs Sonia Sidhu, Amandeep Sodhi and Ruby Sahota, the Secretary of State for Combating Crime, were asked numerous questions about their efforts to tackle India’s alleged transnational crimes.

Peel Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah attended the town hall in Brampton Sunday but offered few tangible examples of what is being done to protect Sikh residents.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer)

Those in attendance heard that some among them were under active extortion threats and were fearful of coming forward. Boparai said community members are feeling “insecure and helpless.”

“There are hundreds of victims,” Boparai said. “Some of them have approached me today who are not willing to speak publicly, are telling me their stories, and saying that we don’t know what to do. No one takes any sort of action.”

Last year, Peel Police, with the assistance of other GTA law enforcement agencies and the Canada Border Services Agency, began investigating a criminal organization with ties to Brampton that was targeting and exploiting South Asian-owned businesses. 

In June, surrounded by seized guns, trucks and cash, Peel Police officials announced the arrests of 18 individuals, with ties to the criminal enterprise, and the 97 charges that were laid at the time, including fraud, illegal possession of firearms and violent extortion.

Brian Lorette, a Detective Sergeant with Peel Police and the lead investigator of the operation, dubbed Project Outsource, said the force seized $4.2 million in assets, including 18 tow trucks, four high-end personal vehicles, six firearms, 600 rounds of ammunition, baseball bats, tasers and recovered five stolen vehicles.

In December 2023, Peel Police launched an Extortion Investigative Task Force, as evidence of threats against the large Sikh community in Peel, and others of South-Asian background mounted.

Acknowledging the scale of the rapidly growing problem—the police were investigating 29 different extortion attempts at the time—Chief Duraiappah said there could be more victims, and again urged community members and business owners to come forward to police with any concerns. 

There have been reports in recent years of criminal gangs operating in Canada with direct links to organized crime in India.

"As far as the international ties go, we know that some of these offences have been done in the name of international ties, but Project Outsource has yet to reveal a direct link between these international ties and the persons arrested in our case," Lorette said in June when the 18 arrests were announced.

When asked during the presser in June if the criminal ring specifically targeted one community, Durraiapah confirmed that the extortion network had focused its operations on the South Asian community, mirroring the tactics used by criminals in other areas with dense pockets of the South Asian diaspora. In Brampton, Sikhs make up the majority of the broader South-Asian community: As of 2021, according to the Census, about a third of the city spoke Punjabi (the language used by Sikhs), just under 190,000 residents.  

In June, the World Sikh Organization of Canada began to pressure the federal government to add the India-based Lawrence Bishnoi organized crime network—linked to the Indian government according to evidence publicly provided by the RCMP—to Canada’s terrorism watch list, and shortly after Ottawa listed the group as a terrorist entity, with more information being gathered from law enforcement across the country. 

“Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies have linked the Bishnoi gang to assassinations, extortions, and intimidation carried out at the direction of Indian government agents including the 2023 murder of Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar and other violent crimes,” the WSO highlighted.  

Global News even reported that an Indian government agent connected to the Bishnoi gang had been surveilling former federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who has lived in Brampton and used to represent the city inside Queen’s Park.

“Canada’s National Security Adviser Nathalie Drouin has testified before parliamentarians that India collected intelligence on Sikhs in Canada through diplomatic channels and proxies, then passed it to Indian authorities who worked with the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. The Bishnoi gang most recently took responsibility for the May 14, 2025 murder of a Sikh businessman in Mississauga,” the WSO reported in a press release. 

“Senior Canadian officials have also confirmed that India’s Home Minister Amit Shah personally ordered the campaign of violence and intelligence-gathering against Sikh activists in Canada. Shah is widely considered Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi’s right-hand man.”

The Pointer has reported that the RCMP working with local law enforcement has issued Duty to Warn notices to Sikhs, including some in Brampton, advising specific individuals to be cautious as they might be the target of criminal networks with ties to the Indian government.

During today’s Brampton council meeting (December 10), local elected officials passed a motion requesting that federal and provincial governments expand resources for Peel to combat extortion and transnational crime. A letter was sent to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Gary Anandasangaree, Minister of Public Safety, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and Michael Kerzner, Solicitor General of Ontario, calling on them to extend dedicated funding for an extortion task force in Peel, mirroring a model launched in British Columbia, and to provide targeted victim support and community outreach funding, while establishing formal intelligence sharing frameworks for coordinated disruption of transnational networks.

Those gathered Sunday demanded to know what federal officials and law enforcement in Peel and beyond are doing about the alarming violence Sikhs in the area are being warned about.

They said it is not a Punjabi, or Sikh or South Asian issue, it has become a national issue now.

“Peel Police have arrested three people responsible for my father’s killing six months ago. What about those who orchestrated this?” asked Gurlin Kaur Dhadda, daughter of businessman Harjeet Singh Dhadda, who was shot multiple times under the light of day in a parking lot in Mississauga in May, before he died in hospital.

According to Gurlin, in December 2023, her father received a call from extortionists to pay $500,000. He notified the police and security was provided for a week, but then the protection was lifted.

“We need answers; we need accountability,” Gurlin said during the town hall.

She expressed frustration with law enforcement agencies, including Peel Police, and said her family has not been provided any information about her father’s murder investigation.

“Honestly, if something like this happened to a different community, I feel like the outcome would have been very different,” she said.

“Our community cannot afford more silence, and my family can’t afford to wait another day for justice for my father.”

Dhadda urged Peel Police and federal authorities to dismantle these criminal networks, and “prove that our lives and safety matter.”

After her father’s assassination, she posted on Instagram that, “We begged for protection. But our cries for help went unanswered. The system that was supposed to keep us safe failed him.”

She told Punjabi media that the criminals demanding money from her father were linked to India, which she also shared in her Instagram post.

“On December 10, 2023, on his birthday, my father received a threatening phone call from someone identifying themselves as an Indian gangster,” Dhadda wrote.

After her father refused to pay the extortion money, he was gunned down in the middle of the day.

The Pointer reached out to Peel Police’s media relations team, asking about the concerns raised by Dhadda that the family has not received any meaningful updates from the police on her father’s killing, six months later, and why the protection was ended when there were active threats against his life.

On Tuesday, December 9, a Peel Police media relations officer said the force needed more time to respond. No reply was received ahead of publication.

Singh’s case was not isolated. Another incident happened last year when gunshots were fired at a Brampton-based car dealership.  

“I’ve received extortion calls at least five times,” Manpreet Boparai, owner of 22 Auto Sales, said in a Punjabi-language interview with OMNI Television.

“Our Caledon Mitsubishi dealership was shot at multiple times—36 rounds were fired. What about the families who get calls every day, being told, ‘We’re going to kill you,’ or ‘We know where you and your kids go’? After the threats, I spent 20 days hiding out at a friend’s house. I changed my home and changed my phone number—and I’m still getting calls.”

“We began to see the trends continue to increase over the last two and a half years, but in the last half of 2023, we began to see a remarkable spike in these extortions,” Chief Duraiappah said during the town hall meeting.

In 2023, 319 extortion-related incidents were reported to Peel Police: in 2024, there were 490; and the latest numbers for this year show 436 cases had been reported. 

Inderjeet Singh Gosal, a Sikh activist and a local leader of Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), has allegedly been a victim of India’s transnational repression. The Pointer reported previously that in February 2024, bullets were fired at his construction site, and since then, he has been under a “duty to warn” notice by the RCMP, meaning that he might be a target of the Indian government due to his Sikh activism. The RCMP has urged him to enter a protection program, but he has so far declined. 

Balpreet Boparai explained during the session that if authorities issue a Duty to Warn notice to someone, it indicates that the nature of the threat is serious and an attack could occur imminently.

“I'm going to quote someone; he is a member of a community organization,” Boparai told those at the town hall, relating what local police officers told someone when a Duty to Warn notice was conveyed (local police typically issue the notice on behalf of the RCMP). “When he asked, ‘What should I do?' The answer was, ‘You gotta do what you gotta do’,” Boparai said, directing his comment at the elected officials in attendance.

On Sunday, December 7, the Sikh community gathered at the Canadian Convention Centre in Brampton, urging elected representatives and law enforcement officials to dismantle Indian-backed terrorist groups involved in violent crimes that target Peel’s large Sikh community.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer)

During the Q&A segment of the town hall, Prabjot Singh asked Sahota, who is the cabinet member in charge of combating crime, for government data on how many Duty to Warn notices have been issued. She was also asked why the names of three individuals tied to an extortion investigation have not been made public, and the specific  reason they were expelled from Canada. The case stems from a broader investigation led by the B.C. extortion task force launched in September to address a wave of threats, shootings and arsons targeting South Asian businesses in the province’s Lower Mainland, where authorities have launched immigration investigations involving 78 foreign nationals.  

Sahota said there are ongoing discussions with Statistics Canada to release the number of Duty to Warn notices, but currently, there is no official data available. She said all three individuals were expelled because of failure to comply with immigration rules.

There have been links between some of the Canadian extortion cases and the Bishnoi gang, according to several news reports, including Al Jazeera, which reported that two men who claimed responsibility for the murder of a Canadian Sikh identified themselves as members of the criminal entity. Bishnoi has been in an Indian jail since 2015 but allegedly runs his criminal enterprise from behind bars, with the help of Indian government operatives, according to numerous reports and information from Canadian authorities.   

In October 2024 the RCMP provided explosive evidence of the role India’s government played in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023 in Surrey, British Columbia, allegedly working with Bishnoi’s criminal network.

In an October 2024 press conference, the RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme, together with Assistant Commissioner Brigitte Gauvin, said the “Bishnoi gang” has connections to the Indian government and is involved in criminal acts, including the murder of 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.”

The United States Justice Department filed a harrowing indictment filled with detailed evidence in 2023, including wiretap communications and other surveillance material. The evidence directly links 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, Nijjar’s close associate and a man who has led a global referendum movement to create an independent Sikh nation, known as Khalistan, to be carved out of Punjab.

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)

An updated indictment by the U.S. Justice Department last year included more details, implicating the Indian government, detailing that murder-for-hire and money laundering charges were laid against Vikash Yadav, 39, an agent of the Indian government. He allegedly directed from India the thwarted attempt to assassinate Pannun in New York City.

The U.S. indictment, which was peppered with quotes from wire tap and other surveillance material, clearly linked Nijjar’s assassination with the Indian agent’s attempt to kill Pannun: “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..

Despite all the evidence pointing at India’s role in carrying out criminal operations in Canada against Canadians, Prime Minister Carney is strengthening trade ties, and both countries have agreed to launch the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

Since June’s G7 summit in Kananaskis and, most recently, at the G20 summit in Johannesburg on November 23, negotiations between Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the two governments have reportedly been progressing, to enhance economic partnership following years of tension over India’s alleged criminal activity.

Following the G20 Summit, Maninder Sidhu, a Brampton Liberal MP and Canada’s Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade, and Economic Development, undertook an official visit to India from November 11 to 14. He discussed bilateral trade with India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal. Similarly, Anita Anand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, travelled to India for a two-day visit in October and met with India’s Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, where multiple matters were addressed, from enhancing security cooperation to bilateral trade and promoting two-way trade for natural gas and investment in the oil and gas exploration sector.

The Pointer sent questions to both Canadian ministers regarding economic cooperation with India while the security threat against Sikh Canadians remains active and unresolved. They were also asked to address concerns raised by Sikh organizations regarding Canadian investigations into India’s alleged role in criminal activity targeting Canadian Sikhs, which might be complicated by competing economic interests under the Carney government. 

They did not respond.

The economic priority has been heavily criticized by Sikh groups.

“The Carney government has prioritized trade over safety and rule of law,” Boparai said in an interview with The Pointer. He expressed concern that Carney’s priorities could compromise the ongoing RCMP investigation into India’s role in the Nijjar murder and other alleged criminal activities in Canada targeting Sikhs.

Carney has made it clear during recent communication between government officials and counterparts in New Delhi that advancing stalled economic discussions with India is a priority, following years of tense escalations due to the alleged criminal actions orchestrated by the ruling government of the world’s largest country. 

Foreign interference and the rule of law, even criminal activities targeting Canadian citizens on Canadian soil, however, have not been part of Carney’s publicly stated priorities while dealing with India. Anand was in New Delhi to meet with her Indian counterpart, and security concerns were addressed, but India’s commitment to halt foreign interference has been met with skepticism—the country appointed Parag Jain as its new head of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s main intelligence service.

Jain served as a former diplomat for the Indian government in Canada, from 2016 to 2018, working as a community and consular affairs officer. According to a database hosted by the organization ENSAAF, which advocates against human rights abuses carried out by the Indian government, Jain had previously been implicated in serious crimes, including the abduction and extrajudicial killing of a young man named Sukhdev Singh in Patiala, a city in the northwest Indian state of Punjab where the majority of Sikhs in the country live. According to the World Sikh Organization, he was also accused of targeting Sikh Canadians while running an undeclared intelligence operation.

While talking to The Pointer in June ahead of Carney’s G7 summit, Boparai said the Prime Minister sounded more like a businessman than a leader committed to core Canadian values and the safety of a community that has faced widespread challenges stemming from religious persecution.

“This feels like a betrayal to the Canadian Sikh community," he said. "But it's also a betrayal of Canadian values and the rule of law, and overall, it's just a complete turnaround from the position that prime minister Trudeau had taken, which was a principled and right position.”

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