Sikh activist in UK told to increase security over Hindu nationalist threats

Police have advised a high-profile Sikh activist in the UK to install security cameras at his home and reinforce door locks because of threats from Hindu nationalist elements.

Paramjeet Singh Pamma, 52, said he had been visited by police and received verbal advice to increase his security due to intelligence suggesting threats to his safety.

Singh Pamma said the threats were linked to the Indian government and he accused ministers in the UK of failing to take “relentless” transnational repression by India seriously. The Indian embassy declined to comment.

Singh Pamma is a figure in the Khalistan movement, a campaign for an independent Sikh state that is outlawed in India. Indian government officials describe the movement as terrorist and a threat to national security.

According to MI5, foreign governments are increasingly targeting dissidents on UK soil, and the number of investigations into state threats has grown by 48% since 2022. In its 2024-25 report on transnational repression, the joint committee on human rights listed India as a country of concern alongside China and Russia.

Singh Pamma’s claims come as the UK pursues a closer relationship with Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, seeing it as a key partner to balance China’s growing power. Last May, after three years of negotiations, the UK agreed a trade deal with India, long touted as one of the biggest prizes of Brexit.

Singh Pamma is one two Sikh nationalists based in the UK to have told the Guardian they have been advised to increase their security.

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

Singh Pamma said he regularly reported threats to the police but they only began to take his complaints seriously after the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh 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.

In the same year, US prosecutors accused an agent of the Indian government of directing the attempted assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American citizen, on US soil.

Singh Pamma said he was now regularly visited by local and counter-terrorism police and was last visited by local officers as recently as October.

“I’m really very angry with the government that they did not take action when we were asking them to take action,” said Singh Pamma, who asked for his location not to be disclosed.

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

The Indian government has long been concerned about the Sikh nationalist movement, which is largely diaspora-led, and campaigns for a Sikh homeland known as Khalistan to be created in the Punjab, in north-west India.

In 1985, Khalistani militants smuggled a bomb on to Air India flight 182, which exploded off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people onboard – the worst act of aviation terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

Singh 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 allegations “fake propaganda”, condemned the act of terrorism and welcomed “any inquiry in any case” against him.

Singh Pamma, whose family lived in Delhi before moving to Punjab, said his elder brother was killed by Indian police for his activism in 1991. He claimed he was picked up multiple times and tortured by police before leaving India and being given political asylum in the UK in 2000.

Singh Pamma was arrested in 2010 after authorities in Punjab said they suspected him of involvement in a murder, but UK counter-terrorism police could find no evidence against him. In 2015 he was detained while on holiday in Portugal but a judge threw out India’s attempt to make him stand trial on terrorism charges.

He claims to have regularly been a victim of threats and intimidation since moving to the UK, including receiving threatening phone calls. In one incident, visitors came to his home with guns in broad daylight. Singh Pamma was out and the men told his neighbours he had to stop his activism or he would be killed.

In a second incident, several people visited his family home while he was out. The windows of his wife’s car were broken and Singh Pamma’s children watched from the upstairs window as group of men shouted his name. Police questioned one individual but Singh Pamma was told they lacked evidence to charge him and they did not recover any weapons.

A member of the Sikh community told Singh Pamma he was offered £300,000 by someone else in the community to kill him. The local police force that advises Singh Pamma said they would not comment on an individual’s security.

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

Singh Pamma said: “I always feel that [the UK government] is not doing enough. Canada took so many steps in Nijjar’s case, America did so many steps in Mr Pannun’s case. What they have done in Mr Khanda’s case? What inquiries are they doing? It’s been nearly three years now.”

Gurcharan Singh, a Sikh nationalist activist, has also been told by UK police that they know of credible threats to his safety. In Slough, Singh has a private security team and receives visits from officers nearly 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 not safe to attend and that his safety could not be guaranteed.

Singh’s wife died in May 2023 and he feels there are striking similarities between the circumstances of her death and that of Avtar Singh Khanda. A spokesperson for Singh’s local police force said a two-year investigation concluded that there were “no suspicious circumstances” in his wife’s death, and that her cause of death was cancer. Singh said his wife’s cancer had been “under control” and was “not life-threatening”.

“[The UK government] are aware of the threats facing [Sikh nationalists] and it seems they’re being very diplomatic and waiting for the right time to use it as a political leverage rather than thinking about safety,” Singh said.

“If people like us are being threatened and quietened to this degree, this idea somehow that they can seek British interest in that region through diplomatic channels is fundamentally flawed.”

The high commission of India in London did not respond to a request for comment.