Didar Singh Bains, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Hardeep Singh Nijjar - a look at some Khalistan activists in Vancouver, the dispute with India, Iranian spies and Habib Chaab
Piecing together some cases
Hardeep Singh Nijjar
Let’s start with a recap of who’s who.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar (“Nijjar”) was murdered in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023.
He is alleged to have entered Canada from India under a fake name and a fabricated passport in 1997, and claimed refugee status. The Government of Canada has said that he was granted Canadian citizenship in 2007.
Nijjar is a Khalistani separatist. Khalistani separatists seek to carve out a piece of India by force, and to create a separate country to be called Khalistan.
In 2016, the Government of India accused Nijjar of being involved in a terrorist attack in Punjab and sought his extradition from Canada. Canada did not extradite him, and appears not to have taken steps under extradition legislation even to initiate a potential extradition against him.
On July 1, 2020, the Government of India designated Nijjar as a listed person under its anti-terrorism legislation and published notice of his listing. The Government of India said that he was chief of the Khalistan Tiger Force, and was engaged in terrorist financing.
The Khalistan Tiger Force is a group that operates in a number of key countries. It has engaged in armed attacks for ideological and political purposes in India against critical infrastructure and public property. The operating mind(s) of the Khalistan Tiger Force are in Canada, and it derives its funding for operations in India from Canada and the US.
As I wrote about in February 2023, Nijjar allegedly operated a Khalistani training camp for terrorism in British Columbia, which he denied during an interview with a local Punjab news station.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is an attorney who acted for Nijjar when he was alive in British Columbia for his Canadian immigration case and in relation to India’s communications with Canada to seek to extradite Nijjar.
Pannun is also a Khalistani separatist.
India alleges that he is involved in terrorism and is an associate of Babbar Khalsa International terrorists. He is on India’s most wanted list, and is a listed terrorist under India’s anti-terrorism legislation.
In British Columbia, Pannun also acts as the attorney for the terrorist group Babbar Khalsa International. Although he operates his law business in British Columbia, Pannun is physically in the United States.
Babbar Khalsa International is a group that was formed in 1981 in Vancouver by Sukhdev Singh Babbar and Talwinder Singh Parmar. Parmar is well-known to Canadians because he was the mastermind behind the 1985 Air India terrorist attack that killed 329 people.
One of the former leaders of Babbar Khalsa International, Jagtar Singh Tara, went on to start the Khalistan Tiger Force.
On September 23, 2023, the Government of India seized property of Pannun in India (here), after he released a message telling Hindus to leave Canada. He also announced that he was holding a referendum in Canada to decide if an Indian diplomat ordered a hit on Nijjar.
Didar Singh Bains
The third, Didar Singh Bains (“Bains”), is not like the first two and is not in any manner alleged to have been involved in terrorist activities but he is noteworthy because he was an early Khalistan activist in Canada and in the US.
He died in Yuba City, California a year ago. Today is the anniversary of his funeral. His funeral was live-broadcast from a gym in Yuba City and published on YouTube. It was so jam-packed that people were forced to remain outside the gym to hear the speeches.
In Yuba City, he was the leader of the Sikh community - not in an elected sense but in all other senses. By the time of his death last year, he was a well-respected and prominent business leader, known as the “Peach King.”
He seems to have been an amazing entrepreneur who built a successful farming empire in the US, after having arrived in North America with $8 in his pocket.
His Khalistani separatism seems to have been relatively short-lived.
Bains was one of the first advocates for a separate state of Khalistan, and in the 1980s, he founded the World Sikh Organization.
In the summer of 1984, Bains told a reporter in the US that he was going to teach India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandi how they were going to get freedom. “I really mean it,” he said. His interview is below.
In the interview, Bains was talking about “Operation Blue Star”. This operation was an operation by the Indian military in June 1984, to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, aka Jarnail Singh Brar, and his followers from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib complex in Amritsar. Over 500 Sikhs were killed in the operation.
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated in retaliation for Operation Blue Star.
In 1985, Didar Bains appeared in Montreal at a Khalistani rally (here), and for the next ten years after that, he was the point person for the pro-Khalistan lobby in the US, according to the India Times (here).
In 1997, Bains returned to India for a visit and was denied entry because his name was on a blacklist. He was eventually allowed to enter India because by then, according to the India Times, he had moved away from what they called “his separatist moorings”.
Bains was also well-known in the Vancouver community, and operated businesses in British Columbia in the 1980s and 1990s.
For example, he owned a blueberry farm in Richmond, British Columbia, that he registered under the name of his daughter, Diljit Bains. That blueberry farming business was not as successful as his American businesses and it went bankrupt in the 1990s, it seems. The land in Richmond remained under the name of the Peach King’s daughter, and later under a Vancouver numbered company, 0826239 B.C. Ltd., owned by her.
You probably have heard of her husband and that exact piece of land but you probably don’t know that you have.
You have heard of her husband and the land because her husband is Avtar Dhillon, a Vancouver physician, who was indicted in the US in connection with the Fred Sharp capital markets case. Avtar Dhillon pled guilty to three securities charges and has not yet been sentenced.
To refresh your memory, Fred Sharp was a British Columbia attorney who was alleged to have secretly controlled over 100 little public companies in Vancouver, and to have orchestrated the pumping and dumping of the shares of those 100 little companies, some with the Hell’s Angels, and with a closed circle of as-yet unidentified Vancouver attorneys who did the securities disclosure drafting and filings for those companies, which defrauded investors of over US$1 billion. Avtar Dhillon was not involved in the entire enterprise but he was said to have used the services of Sharp for some little public companies he was involved in.
The piece of land I mentioned - the old blueberry farm - was converted into a cannabis farm by Emerald Health Sciences Inc., which was the entity that for a number of years controlled a public company named Emerald Health Therapeutics Inc. Some of the co-founders of Emerald Health Sciences Inc. with Avtar Dhillon, included a relative of his named Yadvinder Singh Kallu, who was convicted of trafficking significant amounts of heroin from Pakistan into the US., and British Columbia attorney James Heppell. One of the subsidiary companies of Emerald Health Sciences Inc., Emerald Health Pharmaceuticals, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well, and settled those charges.
So, Avtar Dhillon’s father-in-law was the Peach King. It took me some time to figure that out.
Didar Bains, although he lived in California, was very much tied to the Canadian community in Vancouver and Edmonton, and to many Canadian federal politicians on both sides. He opened the doors for many in the community, in a positive way, facilitating connections that helped business leaders launch and grow successful businesses on both sides of the border. But the story of Didar Bains is now also the story of Avtar Dhillon, and the Sikh community is no doubt disappointed about that.
The Nijjar narrative fading away
Now let’s look at the Nijjar case and the dispute with India.
According to what we are told, Nijjar had allegedly received death threats before his death and was allegedly in constant contact with Canadian intelligence. Apparently, Nijjar made these statements in an affidavit he swore before his death.
Allegedly, there was also a credible threat on his life. If this happened, it meant that law enforcement became aware of it (usually by lawfully intercepting communications pursuant to a warrant) and once they were aware of a credible threat, a duty to warn arose between the Government and Nijjar.
Under a duty to warn law enforcement was obligated to inform Nijjar about the death threat. Pursuant to a duty to warn, law enforcement has to act (either protect him, or recommend measures he needs to take to self-protect and to conduct daily check-ins with him).
So if there was a duty to warn over Nijjar, how did he get killed?
The next piece of information is that, pursuant to Canadian intelligence gathering, the Government of Canada formed the opinion that an operative from the Government of India while in Canada, was involved in the killing of Nijjar.
It seems that Canadian intelligence agencies were spying on diplomats from India in Canada, and intercepting their communications.
Next, the Five Eyes also intercepted some communications and shared that information with Canadian intelligence. The combination of evidence from domestic spying activities and foreign spying activities seems to be the basis for Canada alleging that the Government of India was involved in the killing of Nijjar.
All countries spy on each other so this is not out of the ordinary.
Canada says that after it received the intelligence, it gave information to the Government of India about the existence of a tie of the murder to Indian agents. India says it received nothing that could be considered “evidence” in connection with the murder of Nijjar.
Then the Premier of British Columbia announced that he was briefed by the Canadian intelligence agency and was shown their intelligence in the Nijjar matter, and that such intelligence was a mere collection of the results of Google searches, meaning it was all open source material.
And now, Canada has gone quiet, except to reiterate that it wants India to cooperate in its investigation. In parallel with the dispute with India, however, is the fact that a larger number of Canadians have become familiar with some of the more extremist and violent sides of some in the Khalistani movement, and have seen that incidents such as the Air India terrorist attack against Canadians are glorified and celebrated in billboards in some areas in Canada, and don’t subscribe to the view that this is free speech.
So where are we headed?
Well today, in Toronto some Khalistani activists appeared with a cut-out of Prime Minister Modi and invited attendees to take punches at it (see here), which is not going to be well-received in India.
According to this reporter from India (below), who has the best access to the Government of India as far as I can tell, Canada has allegedly called on the US to broker a conversation between it and India in order for Canada to make amends.
Transnational organized crime hits
This is not the first case of an allegation of foreign nationals carrying out a hit in the Vancouver area. Canada was used as a killing ground for a far more serious international case involving spy agencies not too long ago that is remarkably ignored across Canada.
In April 2016, two Vancouver alleged gang members, Harpreet Singh Majhu and Orosman Jr. Garcia-Arevalo, answered an ad to travel to Dubai and commit a murder; they were then hired online for the hit. How much they were paid remains unknown.
They traveled to Dubai and were supplied with guns, silencers, ammunition, photos of the target, a description of the target’s vehicle and where he could be located.
The target was an Iranian named Cetin Koç, who was the head of a Turkish drug trafficking ring who was living in Dubai.
On May 4, 2016, the two Vancouverites killed Cetin Koç in his vehicle and fled the country. At the same time, in a coordinated operation, Koç’s brother in Iran was kidnapped.
The person behind the hit and the kidnapping of the Koç brothers was another Iranian international drug lord, Naji Sharifi Zindashti.
The United Arab Emirates quickly identified the two Canadians as the ones who carried out the hit (the Dubai airport has facial recognition as part of the immigration entry process and Dubai has sophisticated facial recognition systems throughout the city), and contacted Canadian law enforcement.
Whether it was part of the plan all along or not no one knows, but a hit was then ordered from Turkey over Garcia-Arevalo and Majhu in Canada. No loose ends.
The hits were carried out in British Columbia by professional foreigners. Who they were no one seems to know. Garcia-Arevalo was shot to death on May 11, 2016, and his body was found in a blueberry field. Majhu was found dead on June 10, 2016, in Agassiz in a burnt-out vehicle. No trace of anything or anybody.
Murder for murder
It all started because Zindashti wanted Cetic Koç dead in retaliation for the murder of his daughter in Istanbul. Cetic Koç had killed Zindashti’s daughter by mistake - the intended hit was Zindashti. Cetic Koç wanted Zindashti killed because he gave Greek police information on a heroin shipment organized by Koç through Iran. Cetic Koç was not his real name either - his real name was Parvis Kashavarz Omarabadi.
If you think the Nijjar case is complex and laden with drama, spies and intrigue among countries, it’s nothing compared to the Zindashti case tied to Canada of which we hear little about because in addition to the two Canadian murders on Canadian soil, Zindashti is accused of being involved in the kidnapping of Habib Chaab1.
Iranian intelligence
Who was Habib Chaab? He was an Iranian separatist who was living in exile in Sweden, from where he led a group called Harakat al-Nidal, which, like the Khalistanis, advocates for a separate state to be carved out of Iran from the province of Khuzestan. Harakat al-Nidal is a terrorist organization under Iran’s laws.
In 2020, Chaab was abducted by Iranian spies in Istanbul, anesthetized, shoved in a van, and driven to Tehran, with the assistance of Zindashti2. Iran says that Chaab was working with Mossad and Sweden’s intelligence agency against the interests of the Iranian state.
Chaab received the death penalty and the sentence was carried out in Tehran.
Turkey was in the same position vis à vis Habib Chaab as Canada is suggesting India of being in vis à vis Nijjar, except that Turkey was accused of facilitating the Iranian secret service and Zindashti in the kidnapping of Chaab and his unlawful removal from Turkey. Turkey denied any involvement, conducted an inquiry and concluded that the Iranian secret service and Zindashti were working together and acted on their own in Turkey.
At the moment, Zindashti (in absentia) and several of his transnational organized crime group are on trial in Turkey over the kidnapping of Chaab.
The murders of the two Canadians in the Vancouver area has played a part in that international spy case involving the Iranian secret service because of the killings in another country (Canada) by men acting on orders of Zindashti. The Turkish authorities say that since 2015, the Iranian secret service, together with members of Zindashti’s TCO, have carried out hits of Iranian dissidents and others (2016 was the Canadian hit) around the world.
In other words, in 2016, the murder of the two Canadians in British Columbia was carried out by the Iranian secret service for Zindahsti. No one is freaking out about this case in Canada - actually anywhere - and I suspect there is not even an active file on it.
Last year, Zindashti received an award from the Government of Iran.
Meanwhile, Zindashti’s heroin ends up in Vancouver and in that same circle of his guys, is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, camouflaged as Iranian-Canadians living in West Vancouver with miraculous instant wealth running fictional trade, capital markets or Internet businesses.
“Zindaşti davası çelişkilerle mütalaaya gidiyor”, February 22, 2023.
“İranlı muhalifin kaçırılma anlarına ilişkin görüntüler”, December 17, 2020.