In a submission made before an Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) tribunal on Wednesday (26th January), the Union Home Ministry said that the Khalistani terrorist organisation Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) was responsible for inciting Muslim, Tamil, and Christian communities in Manipur to secede from India. The information on the SFJ was included in a background note prepared by the intelligence agencies which was part of the submission of the Union Home Ministry before the tribunal.
In its order passed on 27th January, the tribunal upheld the ban on the SFJ for another 5 years. The SFJ led by Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun was first banned in 2019 for five years. The ban was extended for another five years in July 2024. The note reportedly said that the SFJ planned acts of terror involving threats to Prime Minister Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.
The SFJ tried to incite Sikh soldiers in the Army and Punjab Police
“SFJ has been trying to provoke on social media, the Sikh Soldiers of the Indian Army for mutiny by asking them to leave the Indian Army and join SFJ. Pannun had urged Sikh Soldiers to join the SFJ movement and offered ₹5,000 more than the salary given by the Indian government. He also tried to provoke the Sikh soldiers posted in Ladakh not to fight for India against Chinese aggression. Pannun also tried to provoke the Punjab Police officials urging them not to stop farmers going to Jalandhar, Pathankot and Abohar and to stop the Prime Minister from his upcoming rallies,” the Union Home Ministry’s submission said.
“Dividing people on communal lines by provoking minority communities against the other communities has become a major tool for the SFJ to push up its anti-India agenda,” the note reportedly stated. The note further revealed that the SFJ, led by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, had been ‘inciting the Christian community in Manipur to raise their voices for a separate country’ and provoking Tamils and Muslims to create a ‘Dravidstan’ and an ‘Urduistan’ respectively.
In 2023 railway tracks were tampered with at Pannun’s directions
The government also submitted that the SFJ activists and sympathisers were involved in at least two incidents of railway sabotage that happened in 2023 in Punjab. It revealed that on the directions of Pannun, clips of a track were removed in the Lehra Mahout village in Bhatinda on March 14, 2023. Some days later, around 50 clamps were removed from the railway track near Pathrala Railway Station on his directions. The government said that Pannun asked Pro-Khalistani Elements (PKEs) to “sabotage railway tracks in Punjab to cause derailment or accident of passenger and goods trains, particularly those ferrying migrant labourers to take revenge of recent killings of pro-Khalistani Elements based abroad”
In 2023, the Punjab Police registered a case against the SFJ for issuing death threats to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. Since 2018, at least 122 cases have been registered against the SFJ by different state police forces and the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
In May 2023, violence erupted in the northeastern state of Manipur between the Meitei and Kuki tribal communities.
