Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has said that US and Canadian law enforcement agencies have warned him of a new credible threat to his life. Pannun, the general counsel for Sikhs For Justice and a dual US-Canadian citizen, said the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police alerted him even as a man from India awaits sentencing in the United States later this year for a 2023 plot to kill him.
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Pannun said FBI agents who visited him last Thursday told him not to travel until the threat is resolved and said the agency should be informed in advance if he does travel. He said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police warned him by telephone on Tuesday. Neither agency gave details about the alleged plot, and messages seeking comment from both were not immediately returned.
Pannun said the warning was issued under the terms of a US “Duty to Warn” law, which requires intelligence and law enforcement agencies to notify individuals when they discover credible and specific threats of murder, severe bodily harm or kidnapping.
The latest threat comes as Nikhil Gupta, a man from India who pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges in February, awaits sentencing on November 20 in a Manhattan federal court for plotting in 2023 with others to assassinate Pannun. The FBI has said Gupta was directed by an Indian government employee to carry out the killing. When Gupta tried to do so, he unknowingly communicated with an undercover law enforcement officer posing as a hitman. Federal sentencing guidelines call for Gupta to spend at least two decades in prison.
Pannun, who campaigns for the creation of a sovereign Sikh state and is considered a terrorist by the Indian government, said in a phone interview on Tuesday that he was “unfazed and undaunted” by attempts to silence him. “I’m not afraid of their death threats,” he said. He added that he hoped the administrations of US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney would confront Prime Minister Narendra Modi over what he described as threats to US and Canadian sovereignty. “The Modi government is proceeding under the Trump administration without fear of any consequences,” he said.
Pannun also described himself as a Sikh human rights lawyer campaigning to turn Punjab into a place where “all religions will have equal rights”. He said Canadian law enforcement had issued “Duty to Warn” advisories to Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the former head of the Canadian chapter of the Khalistan Referendum, in the weeks before he was assassinated on June 18, 2023, in Surrey, British Columbia.
He said the continued threats gave him courage and confidence that his campaign and outspokenness were having an impact. “I’m going to continue, even at the cost of a bullet,” he said. The fresh warning, he said, comes while the US case linked to the earlier alleged murder plot moves towards sentencing.
With PTI Inputs
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
