In the shadow of a freeway shooting lurks the fear of Sikhs threatened in California

They were enjoying what seemed like a peaceful summer night not far from Sacramento. Three friends, who are members of Sikhs for Justice, were headed in a pickup truck for a midnight dinner in Vacaville on Aug. 11.

Their group believes that part of the Indian state of Punjab should be an independent state called Khalistan. Sikhs for Justice has held symbolic Khalistan referendums all over the world, including one in Sacramento this year, which the three men in the truck helped organize.

They were driving on Interstate 505 near Winters. Suddenly, a white car appeared, speeding alongside the driver of their truck. A hand extended from the car’s tinted window holding a gun. Fear struck, someone clearly wanted them dead.

“I saw nothing, else, just the hand and that gun pointed right at me,” the driver of the pickup said in his first interview since the shooting. He asked not to be identified to protect his family.

Four bullets in quick succession were fired at the side window, each leaving a deep concave bullet hole. He veered into a ditch.

The driver, a father of four school-age children, said he doesn’t think much about how he survived. Perhaps it was because the car was lower than the pickup truck. Because of the resulting trajectory, the bullets may have “zipped over our heads.”

Still, as a devout Sikh, he believes that everything that happens in life is predestined.

“I can only thank the gurus,” he said.

The driver said, when the FBI asked him if he had any idea who might have been behind the shooting,“India.”

In the car was Satinder Pal Singh Raju, a Woodland resident and a leader in the Khalistan movement. The three occupants were unharmed in the shooting.

Richard Rogers, an expert in international law and human rights said the freeway shooting near Sacramento could be a worrying example of transnational repression. Rogers spoke at at an online news conference in September announcing a lawsuit filed on behalf of the leader of Sikhs for Justice against the government of India for the cost for security and other damages.

Transnational repression on the rise

Transnational repression, or TNR, is on the rise, according to Freedom House and other TNR experts. TNR involves shadowy efforts by governments to cross borders or oceans to monitor, harass and even kill perceived enemies.

In the U.S. and Canada, TNR has targeted Chinese dissidents, Iranian opposition figures in exile and activists from Sikhs for Justice — the latter by India.

According to a U.S. Justice Department indictment filed in November 2023, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the U.S leader of Sikhs for Justice, was the object of an assassination plot coordinated by Indian intelligence agents from the government of the Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi , prime minister of India.

The indictment followed a June 2023 assassination in Vancouver, Canada, killing Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the founder of Sikhs for Justice. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau linked the assassination by masked gunmen to the government of India.

The FBI subsequently created a transnational repression task force.

Documents show, and TNR and intelligence experts say, a murkier kind of TNR is playing out in California, home to an estimated 250,000 Sikhs. The effort, TNR experts allege, amounts to a concerted effort by India, carried out through nonprofits and others, to create an impression with law enforcement that the Khalistan movement is run by extremists with links to terrorism, and to block anti-TNR efforts in the state legislature.

The nonprofits vehemently deny any link to the Modi government and said they are only responding to a rise in “Hinduphobia,” acts of prejudice against Hindus, which they say Khalistan activists are largely responsible for. The nonprofits point to a string of troubling graffiti attacks on Hindu temples with pro-Khalistan and and anti-Modi slogans , including one recently in Sacramento , as evidence of the Khalistan movement stirring hate against Hindus.

The Khalistan referendum vote held in Sacramento in March and an earlier vote held in San Francisco

were peaceful.

Although roughly 40% of people of Indian descent in California are Sikhs, with most having settled in the Central Valley, in India they are a minority, comprising 2% of the population. According to Human Rights Watch , Modi’s ruling BJP party’s “ultranationalist ideology promoting Hindu supremacy (known as Hindutva), has fueled and encouraged violence against religious minorities,” including Sikhs, Muslims, and Christians.

How the forces play out with law enforcement

Individuals and nonprofits with Hindutva links have sought meetings with law enforcement from Fresno to the Bay Area with a common message: The Khalistan cause is linked to terrorism and should be monitored.

In October 2023, following a protest in Fresno by Sikhs over the Nijjar killing, more than a dozen Hindu leaders asked to meet with the Fresno mayor and police chief, according to the former police chief and others familiar with the meeting.

The visitors asserted that two local Sikhs, one a school board member and the other a local radio journalist and third-grade teacher, were connected to terrorists and a criminal network, and that they should be tracked.

“That is chilling,” Athena Kayshap, a writer and an adjunct professor of English at City College of San Francisco, said.

Kayshap is of Hindu descent and still spends considerable time in India. She said thinking of India as a nation of ethnic groups pitted against each other is simplistic.

“There are millions of Hindus who do not support Modi,” she said. “Journalism is still free here. In India, if you speak your mind, depending on what you say, you can be labeled a terrorist. It’s scary to hear about the same kind of thing happening here.”

The Hindu American Foundation has held multiple training sessions for law enforcement.

In April, dozens of police chiefs, district attorneys and federal law enforcement officials attended a day-long “Combating Rising Hinduphobia” conference. The event included an hour-long training on the Khalistan movement titled “Hate Violence and Extremism.” Conference training materials stated that Khalistani leaders are linked to terrorism.

Emails obtained through public records requests show Jeff Rosen, a prominent Bay Area district attorney, at the request of HAF, played a pivotal role recruiting law enforcement to attend, including inviting a commander from CHP, the agency charged with investigating the 505 shooting.

Arjun Sethi, a Georgetown law professor and expert in transnational repression who advises members of Congress on the issue, said the nonprofits are closely aligned with Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

“We know that pro-Hindutva elements in the U.S. meet regularly with prosecutors, law enforcement and lawmakers in California and spread dangerous misinformation about Sikhs in America, in particular that protected speech and protest in support of Khalistan is a terrorist activity,” he said.

Some examples represent a messaging campaign about Khalastani activism spreading across California:

• Printed materials presented at the HAF conference depicted Sikhs for Justice leaders who have been targeted for assassination by Indian intelligence as extremists with connections to terrorism.

• HAF, according to printed documents, made “law enforcement suggestions” in which they suggested that Khalistan activists be “monitored.” Law enforcement was encouraged to contact HAF for more information about “protecting communities from Khalistani extremism and violence.”

• HAF conducted at least one other training for law enforcement in Mountain View and a spokeswoman said it plans to conduct “many more.” The organization has also raised funds to hold more training sessions.

• Another nonprofit, the Coalition of Hindus of North America, which said it was motivated by Khalistan-related Hinduphobia, played a pivotal role in lobbying against California anti-transnational repression legislation. The group’s materials asserted that temple attacks in California have been “perpetrated by a group of extremists known as Khalistanis.” AB 3027 , authored by Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, D-Delano, called on the Office of Emergency Services to create a program to train law enforcement in recognizing TNR. The legislation had the support of California sheriffs and had passed the Assembly, 72-0. The bill died in the Senate Appropriations Committee following a lobbying blitz by CoHNA.

‘Soft transnational repression’

Sethi said that the sinking of the TNR legislation will have the unintended effect of making TNR easier to carry out by U.S. adversaries such as China and Iran, and embolden India.

“This decision could very well lead to dangerous consequences,” Sethi said. “It communicates to foreign states that California is limited in how they can respond to transnational repression.”

Dan Stanton, a former Canadian intelligence officer and expert on TNR said that the April law enforcement training organized by HAF could be an example of what he called a new kind of “soft transnational repression.”

“To be effective, foreign influence operations are directed at an audience that can carry out the foreign state’s policy objective,” he said. “This conference raises a lot of questions. The messaging seems to be, the real problem isn’t assassination plots carried out by foreign governments, it’s Khalistani extremists.”

In a phone interview, Ramya Ramakrishnan, HAF Community Outreach Director and one of the principle organizers of the April conference, stated that Sikh places of worship, called gurdwaras, had been home to illegal drugs and weapons.

“Have you been doing any research on the Khalistan movement at all?” Ramakrishnan said. “Some of their places of worship in Fremont or in other places have been, there is a lot of drugs, and, you know, weapons…so that’s... you know, organized crime.”

Fremont has a substantial Sikh and Hindu population. The Fremont Police said it could not locate any calls related to illegal weapons or drugs at the Gurdwara Sahib, the one Gurdwara in Fremont. Several Bay Area Hindu temples have been defaced with anti-Modi and pro-Khalistan graffiti, but no arrests have been made, according to both CoHNA and Sikh groups.

Dr. Pritpal Singh, founder of the American Sikh Caucus Committee, and a member of the Fremont gurdwara, said he was shocked and offended by disparaging comments about the Gurdwara Sahib. Following what many, including the California legislature, say was a genocide in 1984 in India against Sikhs, Singh fled with his family to the U.S. He had served a year in prison on charges for which he was acquitted, he said.

Singh met with White House officials in September to discuss the security situation for Sikhs in America, according to Reuters.

“Intolerance of any kind is not OK,” he said. “If any individual spray painted a Hindu temple, that’s completely wrong. That is not indicative of who Sikhs are. Most importantly, there have been no arrests of Sikhs or others in these vandalism cases, and there is no evidence that Sikhs did this.”

He said law enforcement and Rosen should be wary of propaganda and aware of the hate crimes targeting Sikhs.

“Trying to build a case accusing Sikhs, calling us ‘Khalistani extremists’ with no evidence is a problem,” he said. “That kind of thing should stop. This is India’s propaganda, a country that is implicated in a federal indictment of attempting to kill Americans on American soil.”

The Bee reviewed over 1,000 pages of emails and documents through a public records request to the Santa Clara District Attorney’s office. With 620 employees, including 190 deputy district attorneys, Rosen leads the largest DA’s office north of Los Angeles.

In March, the DA was asked by HAF’s Ramakrishnan to to reach out to others in law enforcement to promote the law enforcement training.

“We would need your assistance to reach out to other DA’s offices and also police chiefs,” an email said. “We will be sending you a separate email to seek your help on this so that we can start planning our event outreach.”

The DA sent emails to prosecutors across the Bay Area and nine police chiefs in departments from San Jose to Gilroy to Palo Alto.

“I wanted to invite you to a half-day conference in Milpitas sponsored by the Hindu American Foundation. I am attending, along with some prosecutors and investigators from my office and other prosecutor offices from throughout the Bay Area.

“I believe that this conference will be a good use of your time and/or officers from your command staff.

Conference materials show that law enforcement officials were told that the assassinated leader Nijjar was the “deceased leader of a terrorist organization.” Pannun, the U.S. leader of Sikhs for Justice who India allegedly attempted to assassinate, was characterized as “the legal advisor to the hate group Sikhs for Justice.”

The training, followed by a free networking lunch, also paraphrased a series of poorly sourced news reports from around the world describing violent acts by Khalastani activists, according to training documents.

Rosen, in a statement to The Bee, said: “Your questions imply that this particular group has questionable motives, even criminal intent. Based on my experiences, I am unaware of any motive other than wanting to make sure their community was safe.”

He added: “My invitation to this specific event was made and accepted to learn about and speak out against hate crimes. And that’s exactly what I did.”

Conspiracy theories

In an interview, Ramakrishnan also said she believed a conspiracy theory that the recent shooting attack on I-505 had likely been staged by the Khalastani activists over frustration that the state anti-TNR bill had failed.

“The timing was so suspicious, because it was right after the bill got killed,” she said. When pressed why a political loss would lead to a staged shooting, she responded, “they do all these things to, you know, they attack our consulate, they vandalize our temples. They probably staged the shooting.”

Samir Kalra, HAS’ managing director of policy who helped lead the Khalistan extremism training for California law enforcement, wrote an opinion piece last month for India Today suggesting that the shooting could have been connected to organized crime.

“Another pro-Khalistan extremist was shot at on August 11, this time while traveling in a vehicle on a stretch of a California highway in Sacramento,” he wrote.

Kalra wrote that Sikhs for Justice had suggested that Raju was targeted for his Khalistani activities.

But, he said, “these claims are nothing new and ignore long standing connections between Khalistani groups and organized crime.”

No evidence suggests the shooting was faked, or that any of the men targeted are connected to organized crime.

The California Highway Patrol, along with the FBI, is investigating the freeway shooting and is among law enforcement organizations that were invited to the April training. A spokesperson for CHP said that the official had not attended because of a scheduling conflict.

TNR elsewhere, and Fresno

India is hardly the only country associated with TNR.

British authorities have determined that the March stabbing of an Iranian dissident journalist in London was carried out by criminal gang members from Eastern Europe, recruited by Iranian intelligence.

In the U.S., according to a federal Justice Department indictment , Iran appears to have recruited members of the Hell’s Angels to plot the murder of Iranian dissidents in exile.

And a Washington Post investigation found that during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to the city last November, Chinese diplomats and pro-China diaspora groups organized protests in San Francisco to intimidate critics and grassroots protesters.

After Trudeau made the stunning announcement last September that there was firm evidence that the government of India was behind the assassination of Nijjar in Canada, Sikhs in Fresno held a small protest near a local branch of the State Bank of India.

In some ways Fresno is the inverse of India. An estimated 50,000 Sikhs live in Fresno, much higher than the number of Hindus.

Sikhs there are increasingly involved in local government. Raj Singh Badhesha , until recently the city attorney for Fresno, was appointed in June to by Newsom to be the first Sikh judge in the U.S. to carry out duties wearing traditional Sikh dress.

According to former police chief Paco Balderrama, a large contingent of Hindu leaders sought the meeting last October with him and Mayor Jerry Dyer, saying they wanted to educate the police and the city on threats to Hindus across California.

Dyer’s spokesperson, Sontaya Rose, said that Dyer would not comment because he did not want to inflame any tensions. Rose also said Dyer would not share who attended the meeting.

“I saw a lot of strange moments as police chief, this was up there,” Balderrama said.

According to Balderrama, more than a dozen Hindu leaders shared photographs of two local Sikh leaders at the demonstration and suggested the criminal and terrorist links, asking that the men be monitored.

The participants asserted that two local Sikh leaders were connected to organized crime and Khalistani terrorism. To make their point, the group shared photographs of an Air India bombing in 1985 linked to Khalastani extremists, stating that the two local Sikh men were connected to the same cause.

According to Balderrama, the visitors shared photos of Gurdeep Shergill, a jovial third-grade teacher and member of Fresno’s planning board (Shergill also has a popular Sikh radio show), and Naindeep Singh. Singh, an elected member of Fresno’s school board, is a recipient of the James Irvine Foundation leadership award for his work with a Sikh youth Civil Rights organization, called the Jakara Movement .

Balderrama described the Hindu group he met with as “against the Khalistan movement” and in “defense of the Indian government.”

“What hurts is that Naindeep and I have been giving back to the community since we were teenagers,” Shergill said. “We are Fresno.”

Balderrama said the visitors asserted that the local Sikh leaders were involved in criminal or other questionable and dangerous behavior. He was not swayed by the message of the group.

“Was this transnational repression?” he said. “I don’t know. That kind of thing with Iran and China, it’s happening a lot these days. But if it was, it failed. I know Gurdeep. They were saying these guys were planning social unrest. I have been on his radio show multiple times, and I know he is very pro-police... They are valued members of our community.”

Sue Saigal, who once ran for mayor of Fresno, acknowledged in a brief telephone interview that she was one of the Hindu leaders who met with Balderrama and Dyer, but called the meeting a simple “meet and greet.”

She said she recalled nothing about any discussion of Khalistani extremists. She said they talked about ways to clean up the city.

“What’s crazy is that I’m not even active in the Khalistan cause,” Singh said. “I attended a protest after a Sikh leader’s assassination was linked to India. The Jakara movement has programs in 90 high schools across California that educate and empower youth...We’re funded in part by the state of California.”

Despite the lack of involvement by the Jakara Movement in the Khalistan cause, the messaging that the organization is connected to Khalistan extremism somehow filtered down to law enforcement elsewhere in California.

In an email, Milpitas Police Chief Jared Hernandez thanked Rosen for the invitation to the HAF Hinduphobia conference.

“I realized I wasn’t as up to speed on Khalistan, the Jakara movement,” he wrote, adding “there is a tremendous amount of fear in the Indian community due to a series of hate crimes and hate/bias-based incidents occurring throughout the entire bay area and in my opinion, it would benefit all of us to better understand what is happening and some of the microaggression occurring in our own communities that we would otherwise not necessarily recognize.”

Hernandez did not respond to an email asking for comment.

Singh said he found the email alarming.

“What the heck is going on here?” he said. “Just to see Jakara linked to extremism or hate crimes by law enforcement, that’s crazy. I’d like to understand how that happened.”