(New Delhi) India’s main intelligence agency on Saturday confiscated the properties of a Sikh separatist leader and close ally of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, whose assassination in June near Vancouver sparked a diplomatic row between India and Canada .
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer reportedly based in Canada, was designated as a terrorist by Indian authorities in 2020 and is wanted on terrorism and sedition charges.
He is also the founder of the American group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), whose Canadian chapter was led by Nijjar before his assassination.
The group, which has been banned by India, advocates the creation of an independent Sikh country called Khalistan.
A diplomatic storm erupted this week when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there was “credible reason to believe that agents of the Indian government were involved” in Nijjar’s death.
New Delhi called the allegations “absurd,” diplomatic expulsions followed and India stopped processing visa applications from Canadians.
Pannun then released a video calling on Canadian Hindus to “go back to India,” saying they had taken a “chauvinistic approach” by siding with New Delhi.
In an interview with an Indian news channel, Pannun had said Nijjar was his “close associate” and blamed India for his murder.
Shortly after his interview aired, the Indian government issued a warning to news networks asking them to refrain from giving a platform to those accused of “heinous crimes.”
On Saturday, India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) announced in a statement that it had confiscated Pannun’s house in Chandigarh, the capital of the Sikh-majority state of Punjab, as well as agricultural land belonging to him in Amritsar.
In an email to AFP, Mr. Pannun’s office downplayed the significance of the confiscation of Mr. Pannun’s assets.
“The Pannun properties are not the issue at the heart of the conflict with India,” the statement said.
“It is the Punjab homeland of the Sikhs which is occupied by India and the resources of the indigenous people of Punjab which are plundered by New Delhi,” he added.
Indian authorities accuse Pannun of having on social networks “urged the gangsters and youth of Punjab” to “defend the cause of the independent state of Khalistan, calling into question the sovereignty, integrity and security of the country” .
Sikhism is a minority religion originating in northern India which dates back to the 15the century and is inspired by both Hinduism and Islam.
The Khalistan campaign was considered marginal until the early 1980s, when a charismatic Sikh fundamentalist launched a violent separatist insurgency.
It culminated with the assault by Indian forces on the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the faith in Amritsar, where the separatists had barricaded themselves. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was then assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards.