NIA takes over London High Commission violence case; Khanda, Gurcharan and Jasvir named suspects

UK Home Secretary confirmed the arrests of two extremists for their role on March 19 violence during Home Secretary level dialogue in India this month.

Updated on: Apr 18, 2023, 14:08:08 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken over the investigations of March 19 violence and dishonor to the Indian National Flag at Indian High Commission in London by Sikh extremists.

The Narendra Modi government has taken the dishonoring of the Indian national flag by separatists very seriously.

According to inputs received from Delhi Police, the Home Ministry handed over the investigations to NIA on April 13 after the Special Cell registered a case on the incident on March 23 on the basis of a complaint filed by a London High Commission official present during the time of violence. A case under sections 109/147/148/149/120-B/448/452/325 IPC read with Section 13 of UAPA, Section 3(1) of Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and section 2 of Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 has been registered by the NIA on the same lines as the Delhi Police. Two officials of the Indian High Commission in London sustained grievous injuries during the violence by Sikh radicals.

The Delhi Police FIR names Sikh extremist Avtar Singh aka Khanda, Gurcharan Singh and Jasvir Singh as the principal suspects as also the London High Commission made a SOS call to Diplomatic Protection Officer at 345 hours GMT about the breach in the Indian premises by radicals on March 19. The FIR clearly mentions that 50-60 separatists were led by Khanda (who has an Indian passport number F8777***) and yellow turban wearing Gurcharan Singh. Both of these extremists along with Jasvir Singh were recognized by the London High Commission official as taking part in the violence and dishonoring of the Indian Flag. It was Khanda and Gurcharan Singh who instigated the mob to vandalize the High Commission, dishonored the flag and inflicted grievous injuries to the High Commission officials while there was no response from the London Metropolitan Police.

While the UK government has tried to dismiss the dishonoring of the Indian National Flag by Sikh extremists as part of their right to protest and freedom of speech, the Narendra Modi government has taken the incident as a barometer of its future relations with the British Government. The Modi government wants strict visible action to be taken against those named in the FIR as Khanda’s parents were both part of the ISI sponsored terrorist movement in Punjab in the 1990s. Khanda’s father was a KLF terrorist named Kulwant Singh Khukrana and mother was related to KLF leader Gurjant Singh Budhsinghwala with close connections to Pakistani deep state. Khanda entered Britain on a student visa and now seeks political asylum from the UK government for himself and others by raising human rights violations against his community in India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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