New Delhi: Hinting at the Indian government, Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has claimed that he is still being targeted, even as the government investigates the alleged “assassination plot” claim made by the US security agencies. Pannun added that New Delhi may have been planning to kill him in the way Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was eliminated.
In a phone interview with the Guardian, Pannun, a Sikh-American, designated a terrorist by India, said he is getting hundreds of threats a day. “They want me dead. I know that because I am organising a Khalistan referendum to liberate Punjab from the Indian occupation,” said Pannun.
Pannun, who leads the proscribed Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) organisation said he is being compared on social media posts with Soleimani who was killed in an airstrike, ordered by former president Donald Trump. “They are saying if the US can kill him, why can’t India kill me?” he added.
Pannun has been harbouring dreams of balkanisation of Punjab. On numerous occasions, he has threatened terrorist attacks on India, including on the Indian Parliament. Despite his flagrant anarchy plans regarding India, the US has provided a safe haven to him and the Khalistani terrorist has been spewing venom from there.
Last month, US media reports claimed that Washington had thwarted a plot to kill Pannun, allegedly at the behest of the Indian government.
Afterwards, the Justice Department said an Indian man, identified as Nikhil Gupta, arrested by Czech authorities in June, who worked with an Indian government employee was behind the killing plot,
“The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a US citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs,” Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said in a statement.
