- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
PRO-KHALISTAN group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has issued a warning that Indian prime minister Narendra Modi will have “sleepless nights in America” during his upcoming visit to that country and planned protests outside the White House when the latter visits it to take part in the Quad leaders’ summit as well as when he goes to the high-level segment of the United Nations General Assembly, India Today reported. India banned the outfit in 2019 for alleged anti-national activities.
The outfit has cited “violence against farmers” as the reason for staging the protest against Modi.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel to SFJ, said he would give Modi “sleepless nights in America”.
Sources have, however, said that “SFJ does not have much traction”. They added,“Several of their WhatsApp groups have been created for propaganda purposes, with several numbers of Pakistani, mostly ISI agents. Even in the US, they are trying to gather a handful of people to protest against the Prime Minister.”
ALSO READ: Modi to hold bilateral talks with Biden in US
The group has uploaded objectionable content for several years now and much of it has been pulled down as soon as they appeared. The group is accused of luring farmers by announcing monetary rewards or encouraging the youth to put up anti-India activities with promises of citizenship in other countries.
On September 24, Modi will attend the leaders’ summit of the Quad leaders which will be hosted by US president Joe Biden. Besides Modi, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and his Japanese counterpart Yoshihide Suga will also be present.
The SFJ planned to use Google Play Store to spread its propaganda and an application was uploaded on it for people to register for Referendum 2020. Last year, the group said that the first casting votes for the Khalistan Referendum will be held in London, the UK, on August 15. But it postponed it to October due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Recently, Pannun said in a video that Khalistan Referendum voting in Punjab will be held at the time of the 2022 assembly elections in Punjab.
Top sources said that the intelligence community recently had a meeting in Delhi with top officials from Punjab Police to talk about SFJ, the India Today report said.
“Despite concerted efforts and backing by the ISI, the group has not been able to lure the youth. However, the propaganda tool is being used to hit out at the Indian Government,” the security officials said.
Meanwhile, top US think tank Hudson Institute has warned that Khalistani separatist groups banned by India are gradually gaining ground in the US and Washington so far has not done much despite appeals made by New Delhi to curb their activities.
