New Delhi: Avtar Singh Khanda, a pro-Khalistan activist based in the UK, claimed just months before his sudden death in June this year that he was verbally harassed by Indian police who also threatened his family in Punjab, according to The Guardian.
Indian agencies accused Khanda of radicalising Sikh youth in the UK with extremist and separatist ideology. He was one of the prime accused in the pulling down of the tricolour at the Indian high commission in London during a protest by pro-Khalistan groups.
The Guardian‘s investigation has also raised questions about the West Midlands police’s earlier claim that Khanda’s sudden death was the subject of a “thorough review” and that there was no foul play suspected.
Khand died on June 15, four days after he was admitted to a hospital in Birmingham, UK. He was recently diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, an aggressive blood cancer. His associates suspected foul play – claiming he was poisoned – but British officials did not agree.
Now, The Guardian reports that the West Midlands force “appeared to distance itself from its original statement to the press, when it said the matter had been ‘thoroughly’ investigated”. But the police say they are still “satisfied that there are no suspicious circumstances”.
Khanda’s friends, fellow Sikh activists and family members told the UK newspaper that the “insistence by British authorities that a deeper investigation is not warranted fails to take into account damning details that have emerged about India’s alleged involvement in a global campaign of transnational repression aimed at Sikh separatists”.
The Indian government is facing allegations that its agents were involved in the killing of a Canadian Sikh in Vancouver just days after Khanda’s death, while a plot allegedly directed by an ‘identified Indian government employee‘ to kill an American Sikh was thwarted by US law enforcement agencies around the same time.
Also Read: From Nijjar to Pannun, Modi Government’s Recklessness is Undermining National Interest
According to The Guardian, Khanda’s associates contradicted official statements that the death was investigated by West Midlands police. The police “did not take statements from friends and family after his death, did not speak to his employers or work colleagues, did not retrace his steps on the days before his sudden illness, did not visit his residence or study threats made against him, and did not issue a case number, which would indicate the matter had been investigated”, the report says. Khanda appeared “healthy and robust” in the weeks before his death, associates in Birmingham said.
His mother and sister told the newspaper that they were the subject of an “aggressive intimidation campaign by Indian authorities in the months before [Khanda’s] death”. While Indian agencies considered Khanda a close aide of Amritpal Singh, the Sikh separatist and leader of Waris Punjab De who was arrested in April, his family “staunchly” denied any connection.
When Amritpal Singh was on the run, Khanda’s mother and sister were ‘picked up‘ by the Punjab police. His sister Jaspreet Kaur told The Guardian that at the police station, the police used her phone to call Khanda in the UK and instructed her “to tell my brother that I was on my own and ask him to confide in me: that the police were harassing me but I had found a room to myself and could he tell me where is Amritpal Singh hiding and can he give any details”.
“During the questioning they would call Avtar from my phone and speak directly to him, making threats, saying that ‘we’ve got your sister here, where is Amritpal? We know that you know.’ Avtar’s response would always be the same: that he had never met Amritpal and had no idea where he was and could the police please stop harassing his family who have nothing to do with this, there’s nothing they or I can give you,” she told the newspaper.
Khanda, in a video posted on his personal Facebook page in April, also complained about the Indian police’s alleged harassment of his family. “Police have been harassing me for the last four days. I am getting calls after calls from different police stations and they say the same thing again and again and again, and that is ‘where is Amritpal Singh?’,” he said in the video.
Michael Polak, a lawyer representing Khanda’s family, said the activist “began receiving threats against his life” after he was “wrongly implicated” in the removal of the Indian flag from the high commission of Indian in London in March this year.
