In October 2024, after negotiations with the US, the Modi government agreed to sever ties with Yadav, who is currently at large and wanted by the FBI. India, which has never admitted responsibility for the murder, has portrayed Yadav as an independent actor, but a source close to Indian intelligence told me that one RAW The officer privately described the denials as “complete nonsense.” Another called the plot a “botched operation.” Court filings in Gupta's case indicate that US prosecutors will argue that India was directly involved in the attempted assassination of Pannun and that he was just one of several targets in a scheme to kill political activists in Canada, California and New York. These people, fearing for their lives in India, immigrated to North America decades ago and continued to advocate for an independent Sikh state.
Minutes after Nijjar was shot, his son Balraj received a distress call from a family friend and rushed to the gurdwara, weaving through a crowd that had already grown to about two hundred people. “They pulled my clothes, my arms as I ran,” he told me. In the center of the crowd, already cordoned off with police tape, stood Nijjar's bloody pickup truck. “The second I saw it, I knew he was gone,” Balraj told me. “His last breath was for Khalistan, no matter how many thousands of miles he was from home.”
The idea of a Sikh homeland arose almost a century ago when colonial Britain lost control of its territories in South Asia. The region began to fracture along religious lines, and Sikh leaders, recognizing that their community was much smaller than the Muslim and Hindu communities, advocated for their own sovereign state. The idea was never realized. In 1947, British India was divided into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. As mass migration moved from place to place, depraved and indiscriminate religious violence ensued, affecting Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs alike. The Punjab province, where the majority of the Sikhs of British India lived, was divided into two parts.
Sikhs currently make up less than two percent of India's population. WITH ChapterHowever, advocacy for an independent state grew, partly financed by wealthy members of the diaspora and fueled by discrimination from the Indian government. The most astonishing incident occurred in 1984, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her own Sikh bodyguards; the ruling Indian National Congress helped orchestrate the retaliation spasm of mass violence which killed thousands of Sikhs. After this, community members began to disappear in the state. Such cruelty only strengthened the resistance. Although Sikhism is built on the principles of unity and divine love, a small group of militants carried out a long campaign of violence. Before September 11, 2001, Sikh separatists had the grim record of being the deadliest act of aviation terrorism in history: in 1985, all three hundred and twenty-nine people aboard Air India Flight 182, a passenger flight from Toronto to Delhi, were killed when a bomb in the cargo hold caused the plane to crash off the coast of Ireland.
The cycle of violence and discrimination has only intensified since Modi came to power in 2014. As the leader of the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party, he has led a ruthless Hindu-nationalist campaign that denigrates and attacks religious minorities. For a party that believes Hindus have a pre-eminent right to rule India, the Sikh secessionist cause is a deep affront, especially when calls for independence are coming from Canada and the United States. According to a source close to Indian intelligence, a senior RAW Officials have a “distorted worldview” that “everything is a conspiracy, that the West is out to get India,” and this paranoia has played a large role in recent assassination plots.
The Indian government views Pannun's law office as a breeding ground for terror, a base from which he directs the “gangsters and youth of Punjab” to undermine India's “sovereignty, integrity and security.” The offices are located in a large corporate center adorned with vibrant contemporary sculptures and soft water features in East Elmhurst, Queens. The interior resembles the wreckage of a small business in stasis: Post-it notes taped to the walls, stacks of paper haphazardly folded, a mini-fridge stocked with forgotten lunches.
On a recent visit, I was led through a series of back corridors and searched by two hulking guards. The main entrance remains locked and the lights in the waiting room are turned off. Pannun, who met me in a small conference room, was dressed strictly. “As of 2023, I only wear black,” he said. “I am going to change this only after we liberate Punjab.” He grew up in a village near the city of Amritsar, where Sikhism's holiest site, the Golden Temple, is located. In 1984, the Indian military invaded the gurdwara to capture Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh militant who was hiding inside. In the raid, known as Operation Blue Star, the army opened fire on both Bhindranwale's followers and civilians. Government documents put the death toll at several hundred, but independent reports put the figure at over four thousand. (It was this one-sided attack, sanctioned by Gandhi, that led to her assassination.) Pannun was seventeen at the time. “We saw helicopters bombing and shooting,” he said. “There was blood everywhere.” Fearing that the massacre would spark an uprising, the government launched a campaign called Operation Woodrose, in which thousands of young Sikhs living in rural areas were rounded up and interrogated. “These were the people I grew up with,” Pannun said. “I haven’t seen them since then.” One young man he knew was tortured so severely that his back was broken.
