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Sikh radical in reckless Glasgow act is terrorist Hawara supporter

Two out of three Sikh radicals involved in accosting Indian High Commissioner to UK in Glasgow had come from London.

Updated on: Oct 1, 2023, 08:30:39 IST
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Unlike the SGPC, the Glasgow Guru Granth Sahib Gurudwara has personally apologized to the Indian High Commissioner to UK Vikram Doraiswami, who was confronted by London-based Sikh extremists on Friday and prevented by them from entering the temple premises.

Ranveer Singh was photographed at a shooting practice range with a rifle and also seen wearing a T-shirt demanding the release of Babbar Khalsa International terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara.
Ranveer Singh was photographed at a shooting practice range with a rifle and also seen wearing a T-shirt demanding the release of Babbar Khalsa International terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara.

In a letter to the High Commissioner, the Glasgow gurdwara committee assured the High Commissioner that the three persons involved in the unsavoury incident were not part of their regular congregation and were unknown to the community gurudwara on Albert Road in Glasgow. The committee has requested the High Commissioner to visit the Gurudwara again and a public statement is expected to be released by them tomorrow.

Two of the three extremists who tried to accost the Indian High Commissioner have been identified as Shamsher Singh and Ranveer Singh, both based in London. Out of this Ranveer Singh was photographed at a shooting practice range with a rifle and also seen wearing a T-shirt demanding the release of Babbar Khalsa International terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara, who was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate the 12th Chief Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh, on August 31, 1995. Dilawar Singh Babbar, a human bomb, assassinated Beant Siingh by blowing up his bulletproof car at the Punjab and Haryana Civil Secretariat at Chandigarh. Seventeen people lost their lives in the terror attack and another 15 were injured.

Indian High Commission Doraiswami, a 1992 batch IFS officer, went to the Glasgow Gurudwara at the invitation of the committee in August 2023 and the request was reiterated this month. Despite the increase in Sikh radical activity, Doraiswami has visited at least four Gurudwaras with the community most well-disposed to the Indian diplomat and his colleagues. High Commissioner Doraiswami met the Indian Muslim Association in Glasgow before reaching the Glasgow Gurudwara.

While the Scotland police and the British intelligence were informed well in advance about the visit of High Commissioner Doraiswami to the Glasgow Gurudwara, the incident took everyone by surprise with the local community not being able to push out the troublemakers. Already, the Scotland police are taking the statements of all involved including the local lady Sikh MP of the city and action will be taken against the extremists shortly.

  • Shishir Gupta
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    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