Dal Khalsa, a promi­nent pro-free­dom Sikh or­ga­ni­za­tion, has ve­he­mently crit­i­cized the In­dian gov­ern­men­t’s at­tempt to ab­solve it­self from a con­spir­acy aimed at as­sas­si­nat­ing US-based Sikh sov­er­eignty cham­pion Gur­pat­want Singh Pan­nun. Call­ing the US to in­ter­vene, Dal Khalsa urges it to push In­dia hard. This con­dem­na­tion comes af­ter the Union Gov­ern­men­t’s probe, which at­tempted to ex­on­er­ate In­dia from any in­volve­ment in the thwarted plot on grounds that it was car­ried out by rogue el­e­ments. WSN Re­ports

At a press con­fer­ence held at its head­quar­ters -Free­dom House, Am­rit­sar, lead­ers of Dal Khalsa la­belled the in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the In­dian gov­ern­ment as sheer non­sense, high­light­ing the im­prob­a­bil­ity of New Delhi ad­mit­ting to any di­rect in­volve­ment in such covert op­er­a­tions. “It’s pre­pos­ter­ous to think that New Delhi will ad­mit its di­rect role,” stated Kan­war Pal Singh, while ad­dress­ing the me­dia, em­pha­siz­ing their de­mand for an in­de­pen­dent in­quiry by US au­thor­i­ties into the mat­ter.

Kan­war Pal Singh, a se­nior leader of Dal Khalsa, an­nounced the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s plans to write to the US ad­min­is­tra­tion, urg­ing them not to take In­di­a’s self-con­ducted in­ves­ti­ga­tion at face value. In­stead, they ad­vo­cate for a thor­ough and im­par­tial probe within the United States, aim­ing to bring the per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice on Amer­i­can soil.

The In­dian gov­ern­ment, un­der Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, has re­cently ac­knowl­edged that an in­di­vid­ual, pre­vi­ously as­so­ci­ated with RAW (Re­search and Analy­sis Wing, In­di­a’s ex­ter­nal in­tel­li­gence agency), and di­rectly in­volved in the al­leged plot to kill Gur­pat­want Singh Pan­nun, is no longer em­ployed by the agency. This ad­mis­sion has led Dal Khalsa to ar­gue that if In­dia gen­uinely seeks to es­tab­lish trust with the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity and the ag­grieved Sikh com­mu­nity, it must ex­tra­dite the for­mer RAW of­fi­cial to the United States for crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

Kan­war Pal Singh, while talk­ing to WSN said, “In­dia must come clean on the role of the rogue el­e­ments. Who are they? When did they turn rogue? Where are they now? What ac­tion, if any, has the gov­ern­ment of In­dia taken?”

“In­dia must come clean on the role of the rogue el­e­ments. Who are they? When did they turn rogue? Where are they now? What ac­tion, if any, has the gov­ern­ment of In­dia taken?”

The Five Eye coun­tries must ask un­com­fort­able ques­tions to In­dia and get to the bot­tom of the mat­ter. Mere coverups will not as­suage the fears of the Sikh com­mu­nity and Sikh res­i­dents in these coun­tries are still search­ing for an­swers from their re­spec­tive coun­tries.

High­light­ing the Modi gov­ern­men­t’s his­tor­i­cal ten­dency to at­tribute ter­ror ac­tiv­i­ties within In­dia to “rogue el­e­ments” or “non-state ac­tors” from Pak­istan, Dal Khal­sa’s cri­tique points out the irony in In­dia now fac­ing sim­i­lar ac­cu­sa­tions. This, ac­cord­ing to the or­ga­ni­za­tion, raises se­ri­ous con­cerns about In­di­a’s ex­tra­ju­di­cial ter­ror ac­tiv­i­ties on for­eign soil, par­tic­u­larly against the Sikh di­as­pora.

Paramjit Singh Mand, the re­cently se­lected work­ing pres­i­dent of Dal Khalsa, ex­pressed dis­trust in In­di­a’s au­thor­i­tar­ian regime, es­pe­cially in light of at­tempts to harm Sikh Amer­i­cans on US soil. The or­ga­ni­za­tion’s stance is clear: the United States pol­i­cy­mak­ers should not ac­cept In­di­a’s find­ings at face value.

Dal Khal­sa’s stance is clear: the United States and other coun­tries of the Five Eye Group pol­i­cy­mak­ers should not ac­cept In­di­a’s find­ings at face value.

In a broader cri­tique of the In­dian po­lit­i­cal sys­tem, Kan­war Pal Singh also com­mented on the re­cent ar­rest of Arvind Ke­jri­wal, the bu­reau­crat-turned-politi­cian known for his anti-cor­rup­tion stance, un­der­scor­ing the en­demic cor­rup­tion plagu­ing In­di­a’s po­lit­i­cal land­scape. Ad­di­tion­ally, the wrong­ful de­ten­tions of promi­nent fig­ures and ac­tivists within the Sikh com­mu­nity, such as Sukh­pal Singh Khaira and Prof Devin­der Singh Bhullar, were high­lighted as ex­am­ples of the In­dian gov­ern­men­t’s re­pres­sion and ex­cesses against the peo­ple of Pun­jab.

Dal Khal­sa’s stance is a tes­ta­ment to their re­solve in seek­ing jus­tice and trans­parency, in­vok­ing Gur­ban­i’s wis­dom, “as you sow so shall you reap,” as a moral foun­da­tion for their cam­paign against In­di­a’s trans­gres­sions against the Sikh com­mu­nity and be­yond.