Pak diplomatic fly in Canada Sikh referendum soup

The visit of Pakistani Consul General Vancouver Janbaz Khan to pro Khalistan Gurudwaras in Surrey on the day of Sikh referendum indicates that Islamabad continues to instigate and support Sikh radicals against India.

Published on: Sep 23, 2022, 10:40:27 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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On the day the so-called Sikh Referendum was held in Brampton, Ontario, the Pakistani Consul General Janbaz Khan visited two pro-Khalistan Gurudwara in Surrey in Vancouver ostensibly to thank the office-bearers for sending donations for flood relief in Pakistan.

Fishing in troubled waters: Pakistani diplomat Janbaz Khan wearing green headband addresses Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Surrey with photographs of top Khalistani leaders behind him.

The Pakistan CG Khan, who has done two stints in India in Pakistani High Commission, visited pro-Khalistan Sri Dashmesh Darbar and Guru Nanak Sikh Gurudwara in Surrey on September 18 along with two officers of his consulate and held secret meetings with the separatist office bearers.

ALSO READ: India puts UK, Canada on notice over Sikh radicals and attacks on Hindu temples

The President of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurudwara is Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who carries a ₹10 lakh bounty on his head as he is wanted in four NIA cases pertaining to Sikh radicalism including the conspiracy to kill a Hindu priest, Kamaldeep Sharma, at Phillaur in Punjab. The Dashmesh Darbar temple is also run by pro-separatists’ elements and friends of Nijjar.

On Friday, the NIA filed supplementary chargesheet in the case related to the killing of the Hindu priest. The anti-terror task force charged Arshdeep Singh, aka Arsh, and Nijjar, both based in Canada, of hatching a conspiracy to disturb peace and disrupt the communal harmony. Gagandeep Singh, aka Gaggu, had allegedly supplied weapons to the members of the terror gang on the directions of Arsh.

While the Justin Trudeau government has officially communicated to India on September 16 that it does not recognise the so-called referendum and respects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of India, the fact is that due to votebank compulsions, the Canadian government has done little to curb anti-India tendencies amongst the radicalized Sikh community. The Indian angst has been communicated verbally and in writing to Toronto at the highest political as well as institutionalized security levels.

As Nijjar, chief of Khalistan Tiger Force, was the representative of proscribed Sikhs for Justice platform run by US based separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, the visit of Pakistan CG on the Brampton referendum day confirms that Pakistani deep state is fishing in troubled waters.

It is now known for decades that Pakistani ISI is the main player behind this Sikh separatist movement with several India’s most wanted Sikh terrorists taking shelter in Lahore. Over the past decades, India has handed over dossier of Sikh terrorists and gangsters taking shelter in Pakistan to Islamabad for deporting them back to their country of origin but to no avail.

Nijjar along with another associate Moninder Singh Boyle, former president of Dashmesh Darbar, were the instrumental in launching a campaign against Ripudaman Singh Malik, who was acquitted in 2005 Air India Kanishka bombing case. Malik was murdered in Surrey on July 24, 2022.

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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