What is the banned organisation Sikhs for Justice?

Despite supposedly “turning a page” from the violence-ridden Khalistan movement of yesteryears, SFJ and Pannun have not been shy to glorify terrorists and mass murderers.

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Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, founder and chief of the SFJ. (File Photo)

Delhi Lieutenant-Governor V K Saxena on Monday recommended a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe against jailed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for allegedly receiving political funding from Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a New York-based pro-Khalistan organisation that is banned in India.

Sources in the LG House told The Indian Express that the recommendation was made based on a complaint by Ashoo Mongia of the World Hindu Federation, a diaspora-based Hindu advocacy organisation. Mongia alleged that Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party received $16 million from SFJ for “facilitating the release of Devinder Pal Bhullar and espousing pro-Khalistani sentiments”.

What is Sikhs for Justice (SfJ)?

SFJ was founded in 2007 by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US-based attorney who is currently in his late 40s. According to its website, SFJ seeks to achieve “self-determiniation for the Sikh people in their historic homeland” in “Indian held Punjab”, and “establish a sovereign state, popularly known as Khalistan”.

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“It was formed with the overt recognition that the wanton use of violence had been the Khalistan movement’s Achilles heel,” Terry Milewski, Canadian journalist and the author of Blood for Blood: Fifty Years of the Global Khalistan Project (2021), had previously told The Indian Express. Pannun’s motto was “ballots not bullets”, Milewski said.

Read | Citing UAPA language, SC denies bail to member of Sikhs for Justice

Thus far, SFJ’s most notable activity has been the so-called ‘Referendum 2020’ for the secession of Punjab — specifically the Indian state and not the Pakistani province — held among the Sikh diaspora in some cities.

“The rules and identification requirements are farcical,” Milewski told The Indian Express. “I have a friend in London who logged on online to register to vote, put down Angelina Jolie as his name, and was successfully registered for the vote. Pannun and his ilk put up random, unverifiable numbers hailing the referendum’s success,” he said.

Doublespeak of Pannun, SFJ

Despite supposedly “turning a page” from the violence-ridden Khalistan movement of yesteryears, SFJ and Pannun have not been shy to glorify terrorists and mass murderers.

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For instance, the campaign headquarters for the ‘referendum’ in Canada is named after ‘Shaheed’ (martyr) Talwinder Singh Parmar, the mastermind behind the 1985 Air India bombing which killed 329 innocents, and remains the most deadly mass murder in Canadian history. SFJ has also repeatedly hailed Indira Gandhi’s killers, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh. In a viral video from 2020, Pannun promised to gift new iPhones to anyone who flew the Khalistan flag in honour of ‘Shaheed’ Beant Singh.

“Terrorists have been an absolutely essential part in SFJ’s iconography … SFJ has completely contradicted themselves,” Milewski said. And SFJ does not stop at simply glorifying terrorists. Pannun himself has often mounted veiled threats at Hindus and other non-Sikh members of the Indian diaspora.

Banned in India

India refers to Pannun as a terrorist, and has banned SFJ under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. The Home Ministry’s 2019 notification issuing the ban says: “In the garb of the so-called referendum for Sikhs, SFJ is actually espousing secessionism and militant ideology in Punjab, while operating from safe havens on foreign soils and actively supported by inimical forces in other countries.”

Currently, almost a dozen cases are registered against Pannun and SFJ in India.