A prominent Canadian Sikh activist says he received a new “duty to warn” notice from the RCMP this week informing him of a credible threat to his life, which he describes as evidence that India’s transnational repression of the pro-Khalistan movement continues.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual Canadian-American citizen and a lawyer with the New York-based group Sikhs for Justice, added that he also received a similar threat notice from the FBI earlier this month.
“(The RCMP) stated that since I am a Canadian citizen…it is our duty to warn you that there is exactly the same thing that the FBI stated, which is that there is a real threat to your life,” Bannon said in an interview on Wednesday.
He said the RCMP would not reveal who was behind the threat or the motive behind it.
“They have stated that since this threat is real and imminent, it is still under investigation,” he added.
Bannon added that several other pro-Khalistan activists have recently received “duty to warn” notices from Canadian law enforcement. He said that these names are included in the so-called “kill list” of more than 100 Canadians who Bannon claims are under Indian intelligence surveillance.
He said RCMP officials visited him in New York in June after Bannon reported the list to the federal government, which he then provided to the RCMP. He said the “duty to warn” notices began some time after that meeting.
Global News has reached out to the RCMP for comment, and has not independently verified Pannun’s claims.
The FBI declined to comment on the matter.
Bannon has already faced an assassination plot that US court documents said last year was led by a senior Indian intelligence officer.
The US Department of Justice claimed that the officer recruited Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national and businessman suspected of drug and weapons trafficking, to carry out the killing.
Gupta, 54, pleaded guilty last February to US charges of murder for hire, conspiracy to commit murder for hire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is scheduled to be sentenced in November, and could face 20 to 24 years in prison under recommended federal sentencing guidelines.
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India has denied any involvement in the alleged plot against Bannon or any other attempts to target Sikh activists and politicians in Canada.
But Bannon says that because of the previous case, “there should be no doubt about who is behind the assassination plots and death threats directed at me or the coordinators and organizers of the Khalistan referendum in Canada.”
He added: “Since the failed plot, I have received several death threats.”
“The common ground shared by all of us, who receive duty warnings and death threats, is the Khalistan referendum.”
Bannon was a close associate of Hardeep Singh Nigar, who was gunned down outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023 — a killing that Canada blamed on India.
Both victims participated in a symbolic referendum on Khalistan, the independent state they fought to establish in what is now India’s Sikh-majority Punjab province.
The Indian government considers such activities tantamount to terrorism, and has banned Bannon Sikhs for Justice as an illegal organization.
Since then, the group has organized several symbolic referendums in Khalistan, including the upcoming poll in Edmonton in October.
Bannon says that the new threat will not prevent him from attending the referendum in person.
“Actually, this encourages me,” he added. “I may not have gone, but now, now I will make sure I come because I am not afraid of their bullets.
“We respond to violence in India with our voices, and that is our right.”
But he added that the new threat highlights continued Indian transnational repression and urged the Canadian government to act.
Earlier this year, before Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trip to India to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a senior official said during a background call with reporters that the government believed India was no longer planning attacks on Canadians.
This statement has been refuted by Liberal MPs and appears to contradict findings by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and other Canadian security agencies.
Carney, who has sought to repair relations and conclude new economic deals with India as part of weaning Canada away from dependence on American trade, was keen to publicly revive the accusations against Modi’s government.
In recent months, the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, with which India allegedly collaborated to target dissidents in Canada, has been linked to an extortion crisis in cities with large South Asian populations.
Bannon said he wrote to Carney this summer expressing his concerns and calling for more government action.
He said he received a response from a senior federal government official who told him that Canada has a “zero-tolerance policy toward foreign interference and transnational repression, and they have communicated that to the highest levels of Indian officials,” according to Bannon.
Public Safety Canada confirmed the correspondence and the role of the official, who responded when contacted by Global News.
Bannon said Ottawa’s actions did not match what the deputy minister told him, but they “emboldened” the Indian government to continue its transnational repression.
He said: “The Karni government will be responsible for my assassination or the assassination of my colleagues because they already know that the Indian government, through its agents, is planning assassinations.” “And what exactly is the Carney government’s response? The duty to warn. This is their best weapon yet.”
“What we see is that Canada’s sovereignty, Canada’s national security and the safety of citizens are up for sale…at the price of a trade deal.”
-With files from Global’s Stuart Bell
