Tag: india

SECRET INDIAN MEMO ORDERED “CONCRETE MEASURES” AGAINST HARDEEP SINGH NIJJAR TWO MONTHS BEFORE HIS ASSASSINATION IN CANADA

THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT instructed its consulates in North America to launch a “sophisticated crackdown scheme” against Sikh diaspora organizations in Western countries, according to a secret memorandum issued in April 2023 by India’s Ministry of External Affairs. The memo, which was obtained by The Intercept, lists several Sikh dissidents under investigation by India’s intelligence agencies, including the Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

“Concrete measures shall be adopted to hold the suspects accountable,” the memo says. Nijjar was murdered in Vancouver in June, two months after being named as a target in the document, a killing the Canadian government said was ordered by Indian intelligence.

The memo addresses India’s growing concerns about its reputation due to activism from Sikh dissident organizations and portrays its political enemies as extremist or even terrorist organizations. Titled “Action Points on Khalistan Extremism,” using the name Sikh activists use for a separatist state, the document lists several Sikh activist organizations it blames for engaging in “anti-India propaganda,” as well as acts of “arson and vandalization” targeting Indian interests in North America.

The document instructs officials at its consulates to cooperate with Indian intelligence agencies to confront the groups Sikhs for Justice, Babbar Khalsa International, Sikh Youth of America, Sikh Coordination Committee East Coast, World Sikh Parliament, and Shiromani Akali Dal Amritsar America. It suggests that Nijjar and several other “suspects” are affiliated with one of these groups, Babbar Khalsa International. Babbar Khalsa International is proscribed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. and Canada, but the other organizations named in the document are considered legal in both countries.

A leader of one of another of the listed groups, Sikhs for Justice, was the target of an Indian assassination plot, according to federal prosecutors in the U.S. The indictment, unsealed last week, accused Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, of working with Indian officials to kill Sikhs for Justice general counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American citizen based in New York.

The leaked April memo from India’s Ministry of External Affairs does not explicitly order the killings of Sikh activists. Instead, it calls on Indian consular officials operating in the U.S. and Canada to work in cooperation with India’s Research and Analysis Wing, a foreign intelligence agency; the National Investigation Agency, a counterterror police force; and the Intelligence Bureau, an internal security agency akin to the FBI. Aside from Nijjar, a number of people accused in the document of having ties with BKI are believed to be based in Pakistan or currently incarcerated in India.

The Indian government did not respond to a request for comment. While the U.S. and Canada have both now charged India with orchestrating assassinations against Sikhs in the West, the secret document obtained by The Intercept is the first public evidence showing that the Indian government was targeting these specific Sikh diaspora organizations and dissidents.

Those involved in Sikh diaspora advocacy said that the Indian government frequently characterizes any political activity by Sikh separatist organizations as militant or extremist in nature.

“The Indian government and media consistently aim to manufacture a narrative that describes any type of political advocacy for Khalistan or Sikh sovereignty as ‘Sikh extremism’ as a pretext to justify a repressive security-based response,” said Prabjot Singh, an activist and editor of the Panth-Punjab Project, a digital platform focusing on Sikh politics and sociopolitical issues. “It’s important to recognize that this is a strategy that India employs in Punjab to justify crackdowns on Sikh political organizing, while misusing diplomatic resources abroad to try and enlist other countries as partners in this effort.”

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Indian man charged with assassination plot aimed at Sikh activist in NYC

The Justice Department announced charges against an Indian man who’s accused of directing an assassination plot.

Nikhil “Nick” Gupta was charged on Wednesday after an Indian government employee who works on security and intelligence encouraged him to take out a Sikh activist who supports a sovereign state in northern India, the Department of Justice said.

The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a U.S. citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs,” said Manhattan prosecutor Damian Williams in a statement.

It’s the second such incident announced in the past week. According to President Joe Biden’s administration, investigators foiled another plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States.

Among the most startling details in the Justice Department’s statement is an alleged revelation from Gupta to an undercover DEA agent that another Sikh leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, “was also the target.”

In fact, he revealed, “We have so many targets.”

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Air Force scrambled Rafales after ‘UFO’ sighting near Imphal airport

The Indian Air Force scrambled two Rafale fighter jets after getting information about the sighting of an ‘unidentified flying object’ (UFO) near Imphal airport in Manipur on Sunday.

The Rafales, launched from Hasimara air base, could not spot anything, top sources told India Today.

The first aircraft returned to the base and the second was deployed towards the area to check again, but it could not ascertain anything.

The Eastern Command of the Indian Air Force said that it had activated its Air Defence response mechanism.

“IAF activated its Air Defence response mechanism based on visual inputs from Imphal airport. The small object was not seen thereafter,” it tweeted on Sunday.

“The UFO was visible with bare eyes moving westwards of the airfield till 4 pm,” a CISF official said.

Flight operations at Bir Tikendrajit International Airport in Manipur’s Imphal were halted for several hours after an unidentified flying object was sighted above the airport.

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The World’s Largest Biometric Digital ID System, India’s Aadhaar, Just Suffered Its Biggest Ever Data Breach

In one fell swoop, roughly 10% of the global population appears to have had some of their most valuable personal identifiable information (PII) compromised. Yet Aadhaar continues to receive plaudits from Silicon Valley. 

An anonymous hacker claims to have breached the digital ID numbers, as well as other sensitive personal data, of around 815 million Indian citizens.

To put that number in perspective, it is more than 60% of the 1.3 billion Indian people enrolled in the government’s Aadhaar biometric digital identity program, and roughly 10% of the entire global population. Thanks to the breach — the largest single one in the country’s history, according to the Hindustan Times — the personal data of hundreds of millions of Indians are now up for grabs on the dark web, for as little as $80,000.

To register for an Aadhaar card, Indian residents have to provide basic demographic information, including name, date of birth, age, address and gender, as well as biometric information, including ten fingerprints, two eyeball scans and a facial photograph. Much of that data has apparently been compromised.

Media reports suggest that the source of the leak was the Covid-19 test data of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which is linked to each individual’s Aadhaar number.

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Another Putin critic ‘falls out a window’ to his death: Sausage tycoon plummets from luxury hotel – two days after his male friend died of a ‘heart attack’ on their trip to India

Russia‘s ‘highest-earning elected politician’ who had criticised Vladimir Putin‘s war in Ukraine has been found dead after a mysterious fall from a hotel in India.

Sausage multi-millionaire Pavel Antov, from the main pro-Putin party United Russia, had been on a trip to celebrate his upcoming 66th birthday.

A male friend in his party had died ‘from a heart attack’ on Thursday last week, and the wealthy politician perished two days later.

The married tycoon, an MP in the legislative assembly of the Vladimir region, was listed as Russia’s highest-earning elected official in 2019.

The Russian Consul General in Kolkata Alexei Idamkin told TASS he ‘fell’ out of a hotel window in Rayagada, Odisha state.

‘We are closely following the investigation and receiving all the information from the Odisha police,’ the diplomat said.

In June, Antov criticised the war and air strikes on Kyiv as Russian ‘terror’ wounding Ukrainian civilians.

He highlighted a Russian missile strike and said: ‘A girl has been pulled out from under the rubble, the girl’s father appears to have died.

‘The mother is trying to be pulled out with a crane – she is trapped under a slab. To tell the truth, it is extremely difficult to call this anything other than terror.’

He evidently then swiftly came under intense pressure after which he withdrew the comment and made a grovelling apology.

He made an about-turn and claimed his post on social media had been ‘an unfortunate misunderstanding’ and a ‘technical error’.

He insisted he had ‘always supported the president’ and ‘sincerely’ backed the goals of Putin’s military operation – but local journalists strongly disputed this.

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Indian Government Blames Public for Getting Vaccines Despite Being Aware of its Side Effects – Claims it Cannot be Held Liable for Any Injuries

The Indian government has argued before the Supreme Court of India that it is not liable for any injuries that may occur as a result of the Covid vaccine, according to its affidavit dated November 23.

This affidavit was submitted in response to a petition filed by the parents of two young women in India who tragically lost their lives after receiving the experimental Covid vaccine last year, according to Hindustan Times.

“The petition demanded an independent investigation into the deaths and an expert medical board to prepare a protocol for early detection and timely treatment of adverse effects following immunization (AEFI),” the outlet reported.

The petitioners were Rachana Gangu, mother of Rithaika Omtri, 18, and Venugopalan Govindan, father of Karunya Venugopalan, 20, who both died within 3 weeks of receiving the Covid vaccine.

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Indian surgeon plans to transplant womb into a TRANS woman in world-first op that could pave way for biological men to get pregnant

A surgeon in India will attempt to transplant a womb into a trans woman who was born a man — with the view to making them pregnant.

The risky procedure will involve taking the reproductive organs from a dead donor or a patient who has transitioned the other way and had theirs removed.

There has only been one documented case of a womb being inserted into a trans woman in the past — but she died from complications just months later. 

Impregnating a trans woman would be an even bigger feat, and would require the use of IVF and a C-section, because they do not have a fully functioning vagina.

Dr Narendra Kaushik, who runs a gender reassignment clinic in New Delhi, has said he is ‘very, very optimistic’ he can make a success of the procedure. 

‘Every transgender woman wants to be as female as possible — and that includes being a mother,’ he is quoted as saying in The Mirror.

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US Suddenly Pretends To Care About Rights Abuses In India

The United States is suddenly very concerned about human rights violations in India, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken telling the press on Monday that “we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials.”

While it is true that India’s right-wing government is guilty of human rights abuses and has been for years, it is also true that the US State Department does not actually care about human rights abuses.

A leaked State Department memo from the early days of the Trump administration showed neoconservative empire manager Brian Hook teaching a previously uninitiated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that for the US government, “human rights” are only a weapon to be used for keeping other nations in line. In a remarkable insight into the cynical nature of imperial narrative management, Hook told Tillerson that it is US policy to overlook human rights abuses committed by nations aligned with US interests while exploiting and weaponizing them against nations who aren’t.

“In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights,” Hook explained in the memo.

“One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries,” Hook wrote. “We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”

No, the US State Department does not care about human rights abuses. Blinken’s remarks are just the latest in a series of shots across the bow that the US empire has been firing at New Delhi to warn it against moving into alignment with Moscow.

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Biden Megadonor Scores $500 Million Federal Loan for Solar Company

A solar energy company owned by a Biden megadonor received a $500 million government loan to build a manufacturing facility in India, the Biden administration announced this week, raising questions about whether the company’s political clout played any role in the financing decision.

The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation granted the loan to First Solar, which is owned by billionaire Walmart heir Lukas Walton, to build a solar module plant in India. Walton contributed over $300,000 to President Joe Biden’s campaign last year, and over $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to campaign finance records.

The loan to First Solar is the “largest single debt financing transaction” issued by the DFC, the agency announced this week. The DFC said the investment in the India project will “promote DFC’s commitment to diversifying supply chains,” following demands from lawmakers that the agency avoid funding any solar projects connected to forced labor in China.

Ethics watchdogs said the loan raises questions about whether First Solar’s political connections played a role in the DFC’s decision. The federal financing agency, which was formerly known as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, has faced criticism in the past for funding projects linked to political donors. The loan also comes nine years after the Obama administration came under fire for approving $3 billion in loan guarantees to the same company—funding that Republican lawmakers alleged the company wasn’t qualified to receive.

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