Khalistani activist’s life in danger from India, British intelligence warns

LONDON: UK intelligence has informed a high-profile Sikh Khalistani activist in the UK that he is facing a threat to his life from Indian government agents in the UK.

Paramjeet Singh Pamma — the UK and Europe coordinator for the Khalistan Referendum campaign and a close associate of the murdered Hardeep Singh Nijjar and Gurpatwant Singh Pannun — has been advised by UK intelligence through several visits to increase his security due to intelligence suggesting threats to his security. The security warning to Pamma is understood to have come from MI5 – the UK’s top intelligence agency for homeland security.

The Guardian newspaper reported that the threat level for Pamma is so severe that he does not live with his family in West London near Southall Gurdwara on police advice and is not allowed to share his location with anyone because of the imminent threat he faces due to his Khalistan activism and campaigning for the Khalistan referendum.

It is understood that Pamma has received the latest security warning from UK intelligence – that Indian state agents operating on UK soil are going to kill him – consistently over the past few months.

Pamma told the Guardian that the threats are linked to the Indian government as part of relentless transnational repression by the Indian state. The Indian embassy declined to comment.

“The repression we are going through has been relentless, it is crossing borders and reaching our families now. This is terror, basically, by the Indian government,” said Pamma, who was forced to live apart from his family after threats.

Pamma said he regularly reported threats to UK police, but they only began to take his complaints seriously after the 2023 killing of Nijjar, a prominent Sikh activist, in Canada, which the country’s then-prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said intelligence agencies had linked to Indian government agents.

That same year, US prosecutors charged an Indian government agent with orchestrating the assassination attempt on General Pannun, an American citizen of the SFJ, on US soil.

A Home Office spokesman said they did not comment on individual cases or intelligence matters. “We are proud of our diverse communities and British Sikhs make a huge contribution to the strength of our society. Their safety, like that of everyone in the UK, remains our highest priority,” the spokesman said.

The Indian government has long been concerned about the Sikh nationalist movement, which is largely led by the diaspora, and campaigns to create a Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan, in Punjab, northwest India.

In 1985, Khalistani militants smuggled a bomb onto Air India Flight 182, which exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 on board – the worst act of air terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

Pamma is reported in Indian media to have previously been a fundraiser for Babbar Khalsa International, which investigators believe was responsible for the bombing. He called the accusations “false propaganda”, condemned the act of terrorism and welcomed “any investigation in any case” against him.

Pamma’s older brother was killed by Indian police for his activism in Khalistan in 1991. Pamma was arrested several times and tortured by police before fleeing India and being granted political asylum in the UK in 2000. He was arrested in 2010 after authorities in Punjab said they suspected him of involvement in a UK murder.

In 2015, he was detained while on vacation in Portugal, but a judge rejected India’s bid to have him stand trial on terrorism charges.

In the same year, senior Indian diplomat Samant Goel approached Pamma in London and asked him to leave Khalistan or face dire consequences. Pamma refused and reported the threats to UK intelligence. After returning from London, Goel became the head of India’s foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). From his new position, Goel ordered assassination plots against Khalistan referendum activists in the US, Canada and the UK.

According to MI5, foreign governments are increasingly targeting dissidents on UK soil and the number of investigations into state threats has increased by 48% since 2022. In its 2024-25 report on transnational repression, the Joint Commission on Human Rights ranked India as a country of concern.

The Guardian wrote that the issue of Pamma’s threat has grown as the UK seeks a closer relationship with the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi, seeing it as a key partner in balancing China’s growing power.

In 2023, a Birmingham-based Sikh activist, Avtar Singh Khanda, died suddenly after complaining that Indian police were harassing him by phone and threatening his family in Punjab. A pathologist noted that the autopsy result did not mean “that poisoning can be completely ruled out.”

Gurcharan Singh, a Sikh nationalist activist, has also been told by UK police that they are aware of credible threats to his safety.

In Slough, West London, Singh has a private security team and is visited by officers almost every two months. Two days before a planned protest in March against the Indian foreign minister’s visit to London, Singh said he was told in person by two officers that it was unsafe for him to attend and that his safety could not be guaranteed, the Guardian wrote.

Singh’s wife died in May 2023 and he feels there are striking similarities between the circumstances of her death and those of Avtar Singh Khanda.

The Indian High Commission in London did not respond to a request for comment.