As Modi Visits D.C., Sikh Americans Say Surveillance and Threats Continue

An alleged transnational campaign of killings and intimidation targeting Sikh dissidents has not abated

On the afternoon of December 22, a white vehicle pulled up to the gates of political activist Pritpal Singh’s home in Fremont, California. Security footage provided to Drop Site showed a man parking in front of the property, located on a quiet suburban cul de sac, exiting his vehicle, taking several pictures of Singh’s home and the surrounding area, before driving away after being noticed by neighbors coming out of their homes.

Singh is a Sikh American organizer who has previously received warnings from the FBI that his life was in danger. The warnings came after a series of assassinations and attempted killings of other Sikh activists in North America in 2023, which the U.S. and Canada alleged were orchestrated by Indian intelligence agents and directed by senior officials of the Modi government.

While President Donald Trump courts Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in Washington, D.C., this week, law enforcement agents have been investigating whether individuals working for the Indian government are continuing to target Sikh Americans in an ongoing spate of unsolved shootings, threats, and incidents of intimidation spanning multiple countries.

President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hold a joint press conference at the White House on February 13, 2025 / Andrew Harnik / Getty Images

These incidents are alleged to be part of a global campaign orchestrated by the Indian government to target dissidents abroad, including in the U.S., UK and Canada. The Indian government is presently headed by a religious-nationalist government that has taken a hardline on separatism and minority based political movements in the country.

Singh, an activist for Sikh rights and political independence, has received multiple notices from the FBI about threats to his life. The FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies operate under a policy known as “Duty to Warn,” which mandates them to provide information about an imminent threat to an individual’s life. Around the same time, Singh documented several instances where people came to his house.

We have five instances of suspicious surveillance at my home, with three being in the last several weeks. From what we have learned from the FBI's 'duty to warn' alert, we believe this is linked to Modi's gang,” said Singh. “It is stunning to understand from the FBI that you are a target of a foreign government when you thought you were safe in your home in America as an American citizen.”

Sikh activists in the West have alleged for years that they have been the targets of attacks by the Indian government, including alleged murders. The activists targeted have mostly been advocates for the creation of a Sikh separatist state in India, a cause which triggered a militant insurgency inside India in the 1980s but has gone largely dormant there since, living on mostly as a subject of diaspora political activism.

Last year, the Canadian government issued a series of unprecedented public statements charging that India had carried out a years-long campaign of murder, arson, extortion, home invasions, and political harassment targeting Sikh activists in that country. According to the Canadian government, this campaign included the murders of at least two men, Hardeep Singh Nijjar and Sukhdool Singh Gill, both of whom were shot to death in gangland-style killings that Canada alleges were directed by top officials of the Indian government.

This campaign of violence extended to U.S. soil, according to a U.S. indictment.

In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice issued charges against Vikash Yadav, an Indian intelligence officer accused of masterminding a murder-for-hire plot targeting an American citizen in New York that same year. The plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel for the Sikh separatist organization Sikhs For Justice, was thwarted only after a hitman contracted to carry out his murder turned out to be an undercover DEA agent, according to the Justice Department. Another man, Nikhil Gupta, is currently awaiting trial in the U.S. for his involvement in the botched assassination attempt. The indictment against Gupta suggested that many other killings may have been planned after Pannun, with Gupta reportedly telling the undercover agent “we have so many targets.”

Trump “prioritizes nothing more than the safety of every American, and that is the continued position of this administration,” a senior official said on February 13 in response to a question about whether the president might discuss the Pannun case with Modi.

Singh and other Sikh American activists who spoke to Drop Site said they have continued to be targeted since the FBI foiled the attempted hit against Pannun. The FBI declined to comment for this story, but information reviewed by Drop Site indicated that the bureau is still actively investigating threats against Singh and his family.

“Just A Heads Up For You”

The U.S. and India have grown closer over both the Trump and Biden administrations as the two countries coordinate a shared strategy to confront Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2023, Narendra Modi visited the U.S. for a scheduled visit just days after the killing of Nijjar. Last September, President Joe Biden met with Modi again, after the killing and Canada’s accusations of Indian involvement had already gone public.

“The Biden administration emboldened Modi. Two days after the Nijjar assassination, Modi was welcomed to the U.S. with a joint session of Congress and red carpet reception at the White House,” said Arjun Sethi, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Georgetown University.

Canadian officials, on the other hand, charged that the transnational campaign targeting Sikh activists goes to the very top of the Indian government, and that it directly involves national security chief Ajit Doval and powerful home affairs minister Amit Shah, a close confidante of Modi. Following the murders of Nijjar and Gill, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats from the country, including India’s high commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma.

The Indian government has vociferously denied the charges that its diplomats were involved in any violent activity, denouncing them as “preposterous,” and attributing any such actions to rogue elements in the security services.

In June of 2023, just days after the shooting death of Nijjar in Canada, a Sikh activist in Sacramento named Bobby Singh (no relation to Pritpal Singh) received a threatening text message from an anonymous number. “Just a heads up for you. You’re next in the USA. We have all the tools ready to fix the problems,” the message read, signing off with a phrase commonly used by Indian nationalists, “Jai Hind.”

The FBI later called Singh, he told Drop Site, and told him that his life was under threat. “They told me that there’s many potential threats right now to certain activists in California and the East Coast,” Singh said. “They said your life is in danger and that you need to be careful.”

Then, in August 2024, Satinder Pal Singh Raju, a Sikh activist who was a close associate of both Nijjar and Pannun, was targeted in a drive-by shooting. Raju was driving on a highway near Sacramento when another vehicle pulled alongside him and opened fire, forcing him to swerve off the road into a ditch.

Raju survived the attack, which he and others allege is connected to the same campaign targeting Sikh dissidents. “It’s a miracle that we survived this direct attack,” Raju told local news reporters after the shooting.

In addition to the killings of Nijjar and Gill in 2023, activists allege that the Indian government has been involved in a number of other suspicious deaths and murders in Western countries in recent years—though the cases remain unconfirmed by authorities.

In 2022, a Sikh Canadian man named Ripudaman Singh Malik was shot to death in front of his family business. Malik had been acquitted of involvement in the deadly bombing of an Air India flight in 1985, believed to have been carried out by Sikh militants. In October of 2023, the family of Sikh British activist Avtar Singh Khanda also called for an inquest into his death, alleging that he had fallen ill and died as a result of poisoning by Indian intelligence agents, following a series of threats to his life.

Prompted by the attacks on Sikhs, and other incidents of targeting dissidents abroad by foreign governments, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the subject of what it calls “transnational repression.”

Yet analysts fear that with a new administration coming to power that has close links to India, and has made revamping the FBI and other bureaucracies in its own favor a priority, the focus on protecting Sikhs in the U.S. from future violence will be downgraded.

“By most accounts, the FBI has done a good job communicating to Sikhs in America about actionable intelligence that there were real threats against their lives. But the Trump administration now appears to be deemphasizing its focus on transnational repression,” said Sethi. “We may very well be in a situation in the future where individuals in the U.S. who are critical of the Modi regime may be in harm's way, and the FBI and other authorities know about it but do not provide timely and accurate information to those individuals so that they can protect themselves.”

While a significant number of people have received these warnings over the past two years, the targets haven’t been given instructions as to what they should do other than to keep an eye out on their surroundings and call the FBI if something happens. Many are concerned that the Indian government is simply biding its time before ramping up a campaign that has already claimed the lives of several dissidents.

“We urge President Trump to stand with us and ensure the FBI and DHS take decisive action to safeguard our community from foreign intimidation,” Pritpal Singh said. “American soil is not a battleground for India’s aggression.”