Designate Sikhs for Justice as terrorist outfit, India tells US

Later, Gabbard met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. Modi, in a post on X, said, “Glad to welcome @TulsiGabbard to India. Exchanged views on further advancing the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership. Both countries are committed to combating terrorism and enhancing maritime and cyber security cooperation.”

The discussions assume significance since Gabbard also attended the conference of intelligence chiefs Sunday which was hosted by NSA Ajit Doval, R&AW chief Ravi Sinha and IB director Tapan Deka. It was also attended by Canada’s CSIS chief Daniel Rogers, UK’s National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell and New Zealand’s intelligence head Andrew Hampton – all part of the Five Eyes, the intelligence-sharing alliance of US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Australia’s intelligence chief Andrew Shearer was in India last month, and couldn’t make it to the conference this time, but a senior intelligence official from Australia was present.

That this request to designate SFJ as a terror organisation has come at a time when India is still confronting allegations of an assassination plot against SFJ leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in a US court, and there is an ongoing investigation by Canadian authorities into the killing of another Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, makes it an important element in Indo-US ties under the Trump 2.0 administration. Intelligence about the Nijjar plot was shared among the Five Eyes partners. India has strongly rejected allegations of killing Nijjar, calling them “absurd” and “politically motivated”.

The SFJ was banned by the Ministry of Home Affairs on July 10, 2019 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and Pannun was designated an “individual terrorist” on July 1, 2020.

After their meeting Monday, Singh, in a post on X, said, “Happy to have met the US Director of National Intelligence Ms @TulsiGabbard in New Delhi. We discussed a wide range of issues which include defence and information sharing, aiming to further deepen the India-US partnership.”

According to an official statement by the Ministry of Defence, Singh had a “productive meeting”.

Drawing from the Joint Statement issued after the recent meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump, the statement said “the discussions reaffirmed the growing strength of the India-US bilateral defence partnership”.

“Both… emphasised that strategic security remains a vital pillar of the comprehensive global strategic cooperation between the two nations. Shri Rajnath Singh and Ms Tulsi Gabbard reviewed the significant strides made in the areas of military exercises, strategic cooperation, integration of defence industrial supply chains and information-sharing cooperation, especially in maritime domain, between India and US,” it stated.

It said they “explored avenues for collaboration in cutting-edge defence innovation and niche technologies, reflecting their shared commitment to advancing mutual strategic interests. Additionally, they addressed key areas such as enhancing interoperability and fostering greater integration of defence industrial supply chains to bolster resilience and innovation”.

Singh expressed “gratitude to the US Director of National Intelligence for her steadfast goodwill and admiration for Indian culture and heritage, noting that such sentiments deepen the bonds of friendship between India and US”.

In an interview to ANI, Gabbard reiterated Trump’s commitment to defeating the “threat of Islamist terrorism” which she said “continues to pose a direct threat to the American people”.

Asked how the Trump administration sees the repeated terror attacks on India from Pakistan, Gabbard said, “President Trump, through his first administration in the Presidency, and it continues now, has been very clear about his commitment to defeating this threat of Islamist terrorism that has unfortunately plagued us, and continues to pose a direct threat to the American people.”

“But we see how it has been impacting people here in India, in Bangladesh, currently ongoing in Syria, Israel and different countries in the Middle East. So this is a threat that I know Prime Minister Modi also takes seriously and one where the leaders of our two countries will work together to try to identify and defeat that threat,” she said. She expressed her commitment to ensuring that the US intelligence community is “focused on its core mission of securing” the nation, “seeking out the truth and reporting the truth” so that President Trump “can make the best informed decisions”.