India sought action against pro-Khalistani groups engaged in anti-India activities in America, such as the outlawed Sikhs For Justice, during defence minister Rajnath Singh’s meeting with US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard on Monday, officials said.
“Extremist elements like the SFJ operating on US soil has been a matter of deep concern for India. The issue was raised with Gabbard during her meeting with Singh,” a security official attached to the Union home ministry said.
He said India had urged the US administration to take strong action against these groups. Sources said the US intelligence chief had assured Rajnath that the matter would be looked into.
The Indian defence ministry’s official statement on the meeting was, however, silent on the subject of pro-Khalistani groups and activists.
Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, had on Sunday met national security adviser Ajit Doval who, too, is said to have expressed concerns about anti-India groups, including pro-Khalistani organisations, operating from foreign soil.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh during a meeting with USA’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in New Delhi. PTI
Gabbard, who arrived in Delhi on Sunday morning on a two-and-a-half-day trip, is the first senior member of the new Donald Trump administration to visit India.
She will address the Raisina Dialogue, India’s premier conference on geopolitics and geo-economics, here on Tuesday. Gabbard had last month met Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Washington DC.
Modi inaugurated the Raisina Dialogue on Monday. The intelligence chiefs of 20 countries are participating in the three-day event.
North America-based Khalistani activists have featured prominently in India-US relations over the past couple of years.
A group of alleged Khalistani activists had barged into India’s consulate-general in San Francisco in March 2023, damaged property and attacked officials. A few months later, an attempt was made to set the consulate building on fire.
Later that year, the US alleged that an Indian government official had directed a foiled plot to assassinate Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil, and expressed concern that New Delhi was involved.
India denied the allegation but instituted an internal inquiry committee, which early this year recommended legal action against anunnamed individual.
Pannun is the “general counsel” for the SFJ, a North America-based Khalistani outfit accused of secessionist activities in Punjab. The Union home ministry has designated the dual US-Canada citizen as a terrorist.
In December 2023, Delhi police arrested Vikash Yadav, said to be a former officer of India’s external intelligence agency RAW, in connection with the matter. He is out on bail.
At US request, Indian national Nikhil Gupta was arrested in Prague in 2023 on charges of involvement in the plot to kill Pannun. He was later extradited to the US from the Czech Republic.
Before the US allegations, then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had alleged a possible link between Indian government agents and the assassination of a Canada-based Khalistani separatist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, on Canadian soil, triggering a diplomatic row.
After Monday’s meeting, a “happy” Rajnath said he and Gabbard had discussed ways to deepen the bilateral partnership.
“We discussed a wide range of issues which include defence and information sharing, aiming to further deepen the India-US partnership,” he wrote on X.
A PTI report said the two sides were understood to have deliberated on the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific against the backdrop of China’s increasing military muscle-flexing in the region.
A defence ministry statement said: “Both leaders emphasised that strategic security remains a vital pillar of the comprehensive global strategic cooperation between the two nations.”
It added: “Shri Rajnath Singh and Ms Tulsi Gabbard reviewed the significant strides made in the areas of military exercises, strategic cooperation, integration of defence industrial supply chains and information-sharing cooperation, especially in the maritime domain, between India and US.”
The two leaders, the statement said, explored avenues for collaboration in defence innovation and niche technologies.