Investigation: Visas have become an Indian foreign interference tool

Hoping to attend a family gathering and visit his ailing grandfather, Bikramjit Singh Sandhar submitted a visa application to the government of India in 2016.

The visa was denied.

Indian consular officials in Vancouver told him he was flagged because of statements they claimed he made when he was president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple in Surrey, B.C.

Specifically, they accused him of talking about the Khalistan movement that advocates for independence for India’s Sikh-majority Punjab state, Sandhar said in an interview.

It was an eye-opener for Sandhar to see that Indian officials were monitoring what was said inside a Canadian place of worship, and punishing him for it by refusing to let him return to the country of his birth.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Through intermediaries, Sandhar then received a form letter renouncing Khalistan and professing his “deep respect” for India. He was told to sign it if he wanted a visa, he said.

Such incidents are now common, according to leaders of Canada’s Sikh community, victims, officials and police, who described how visas have become a key tool of India’s foreign interference campaign.

For Canadians who need to travel to India for family, business and religious reasons, visas are essential.

But a Global News investigation has found they can come at a cost: Indian officials and agents have been using visas to pressure Canadians to carry out tasks that further the agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

The letter sent to Sandhar to sign was addressed to the consulate and proclaimed that India was his “mother country,” “great” and “democratic.”

But more importantly, it was a rejection of the Khalistan movement that India has been working to undermine in Canada, allegedly through foreign interference, election meddling and violence.

Another Sikh Canadian leader, who asked not to be named due to safety concerns, said Indian consulate staff in Vancouver asked him to sign a similar letter in exchange for a visa.

Two others told Global News that family members were given comparable letters to sign as the price for visas.

In all four cases, those seeking visas were either prominent members of the B.C. Sikh community, or members of their families.

“They are basically trying to control what you are allowed to do, and not allowed to do,” said Sandhar, whose successor as the Guru Nanak temple president, the Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was gunned down last year in a killing Canada has blamed on Indian agents.

“They’re trying to influence all that, just because they have something that you need to do, because your roots, everything else, your land and everything is in India, and you gotta go there.

“And they just hold that over you.”

India’s consulate in Vancouver did not respond to questions. The Indian government has denied allegations that it is engaging in foreign interference and transnational repression.

But at a public safety committee hearing on foreign interference in October, two witnesses raised the visa issue in their testimony.

Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sigh Organization of Canada, called “visa manipulation” the “primary tool India uses.”

“Individuals are denied visas for expressing views India deems objectionable, while others are coerced into actions or statements in exchange for visas,” he said.

“Some individuals have been forced to sign pre-drafted letters supporting India which are then used to extort them.”

The RCMP has also recently accused Indian diplomatic and consular officials of using the threat of denying visas to compel community members to conduct tasks.

In some cases, the price of obtaining a visa was to collect information on Canadians that was sent to Indian intelligence and used to target Modi’s opponents with violence, the RCMP said.

At the foreign interference inquiry, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau likewise accused Indian envoys of “threatening to withhold family visas” as part of a clandestine and coercive effort to collect information.

But several high-profile community members said in interviews that, because of their influential positions, they or their family members had been asked to sign letters denouncing Khalistan separatism and upholding the unity of India.

Withholding visas has been occurring for decades but is rarely discussed openly because victims feel threatened, said Moninder Singh of the Sikh Federation of Canada.

“Those visas are a way for people to get back home, to tend to their families or businesses, and just basically be able to see places of worship in the land that they left to come to Canada,” he said in an interview.

“And to use those as leverage to coerce those individuals into speaking out in a certain way, to go silent in another way, I think it’s just despicable.”

The typical pattern is that visas are initially denied, and applicants are asked to come to the consulate to discuss what they can do about it, he said.

Pro-India figures operating in the community sometimes get involved as middlemen, according to Singh. “Many in the community know who they are.”

Victims of the tactic must demonstrate support for Modi and his government, Singh said.

For prominent community members, however, India prefers letters because it serves the government’s interests to have Sikh leaders denouncing Khalistan and supporting Modi, he said.

“I think it’s quite common for individuals that have a high profile in the community,” Singh said. “Because those are the ones that are valuable to the India state.”

For Sandhar, the visa denial was troubling.

“They had a file or something against us,” he said of the consulate. “It is disturbing.”

“They were saying that we had programs or something about Khalistan, we’re talking about sovereignty and everything else.”

He said he was not really the strident Khalistan advocate the officials made him out to be, but he had spoken up about human rights in India.

But in the days following his visa refusal, someone at his temple referred him to a man named Maninder Singh Gill, he said.

“We were given his name. I don’t remember the person who directed me towards him, but his name was given to us,” Sandhar recalled.

Sandhar was familiar with Gill, who runs Surrey-based broadcaster Radio India. When Sandhar ran for temple president in 2009, he had appeared on Gill’s station as a guest.

“His name was given to us and then he gave another number, I believe, for another person who was going to get the letter that was given to me to be signed,” Sandhar said.

“He just told me that there will be somebody sending something for me to sign,” he said.

Sandhar said he was told “there’s a letter that you gotta sign, and you gotta make sure that you get that done. And then, you know what, they can also offer you a visa.”

Two other sources corroborated Sandhar’s version of events. They include a B.C. community leader who said Sandhar told him and others about it at the time because “he was really upset.”

Gill himself acknowledged assisting when community members had problems traveling to India. And the Sikh Federation’s Moninder Singh said Gill’s name was “very prominent among somebody that might be involved in that type of activity.”

Sandhar did not blame Gill and said as far as he knew, the broadcaster may have only been trying to help him out.

But he said the letter put him in an awkward spot, feeling pressured to sign a statement with which he did not agree.

A longtime fixture in Surrey, Gill came to Canada in the 1970s and started on cable TV before launching Radio India, which he once described as “a must-do communications vehicle for all kinds of politicians.”

MPs, MLAs, premiers and mayors have all passed through Gill’s studios. Radio India also contributed financially to B.C.’s NDP and Liberals in the province, government records show.

“If you want to speak to the South Asian community, you speak to us,” Gill testified before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, at 2014 hearings.

Gill has claimed to have raised $10-million for causes ranging from the Canadian Cancer Society to Sikh temples, flood relief for Pakistan and earthquake relief for Haiti.

He also once shot a man at the Guru Nanak temple, the same place of worship where Nijjar was killed last year. The victim was a former member of a pro-Khalistan group who was suing Radio India at the time.

Despite pleading self-defence, Gill was convicted on March 10, 2016, but an appeal court later overturned the decision and ordered a new trial. In 2019, a judge ruled he had faced unreasonable trial delays and let him go.

After walking free from the temple shooting charges, Gill went on to form the Friends of Canada and Indian Foundation, B.C. government records show.

The group organized pro-India demonstrations, denounced what it called “Khalistani goons” and hosted an Indian independence day car rally.

The event is featured on the website of India’s consulate in Vancouver, which honored Gill last year, according to a post on his X account.

“They just try to connect India and Canada together,” said Satwinder Singh Sidhu, who was listed on the Friends website as a director, but said he was unaware he held the position.

“He’s a good man,” Sudarshan Kumar Bakshi, who was also listed as a director but said he was not really involved, said of Gill.

Liberal and Conservative MPs representing Surrey, some of whom received campaign donations from those listed as Friends directors, said in interviews Gill had been in contact with them and invited them to events.

“I have always organized public functions for Indian diplomats, where 400 to 500 people are invited,” Gill responded.

“I have always invited MPs, MLAs, mayor and council, social organizations, religious organizations to these functions.”

He named John Aldag as one of five Surrey MP’s he had helped support.

But the former Liberal MP told Global News that, after he won the Cloverdale-Langley City riding in the 2021 federal election, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service called his riding office and asked to meet.

“They talked in general terms of foreign interference and the types of things to watch for,” said Aldag, who resigned his House of Commons seat in May to run provincially.

The officers then held up a photo of Gill, and Aldag confirmed they had spoken a few times, he said in an interview.

“And they go, ‘OK, we’re watching him, and just be aware in your dealings with him, that he could have other motives than just helping you,’” Aldag recalled.

Gill did not respond to questions about the incident, but said his only dealings with the RCMP and CSIS had been about his personal safety.

As for his ties to politicians and diplomats, he said he was “one of the pioneers of ethnic media. I have connections with politicians.”

“They all know me from the past 30 years and come to my office to meet me,” he said.

“I am the voice of my community. I have good connections with India, is it a crime?” he continued. “Is it a crime to seek better relations between India and Canada?”

He blamed Trudeau for the current focus on India.

“Trudeau, he had a good relationship with China, he was taking money from them,” Gill alleged. “Chinese ask him, you know, ‘Involve India as well because, you know, heat come on us.’ Then Trudeau mention, like, India’s name.”

A CSIS spokesperson said the agency provided briefings to public officials about security threats, but did not respond to questions about Gill.

“That campaign, I might have had a meeting with him,” Aldag said of Gill. “But there was never any request for information, or sharing anything, or anything I felt was trying to direct me in any way.”

“What I’ve shared is what happened, so I was made aware of a person of interest and just conducted myself sort of according to that information.”

Since that election, foreign interference has become a key issue for Trudeau, who launched an inquiry into attempts to manipulate the 2019 and 2021 federal votes.

Both the Foreign Interference Commission and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) have ranked India as the number two threat, after China.

An NSICOP report highlighted the role of Indian “proxy agents,” which it defined as Canadian citizens and residents who conduct activities on behalf of a foreign state’s interests.

On a website that went offline earlier this year, the Friends of Canada and India described its mission as finding “creative solutions” to the “irritants and impediments in the Indo-Canadian bilateral relationship.”

For India, the overwhelming irritant has long been what it calls Canada’s failure to curb the Khalistan movement that exists within the large Sikh community.

Although once violent, the fight for Khalistan has largely subsided in India while in the diaspora, it has evolved into a protest and referendum campaign.

But in statements to the Indian press, Gill has depicted Canada as a country where police turn “a blind eye” to the “Khalistani mob.”

He called B.C. “worse than Afghanistan.”

“My life and limb is in danger from Khalistani radicals every time I walk out of my house,” he wrote to the RCMP commissioner last year.

He wrote the letter following a March 2023 reception he organized at a Surrey banquet hall for Sanjay Verma, who was then the Indian High Commissioner in Ottawa.

The event was cancelled when pro-Khalistan activists protested outside. Among those leading the demonstration was Nijjar.

Three months later, Nijjar was murdered in an attack the RCMP has linked to the government of India.

Verma was among six Indian diplomatic and consular officials expelled in October over their alleged roles in the killing and other violent crimes across Canada.

Two officials from the Indian consulate in Vancouver were also ejected.

Meanwhile, Global News has learned that Gill is one of more than a dozen Canadians to receive “duty to warn” notices from the RCMP advising that his life “may be in peril.”

The warning came in June.

“You know I am daring person. If I want to do anything, I do,” Gill told Global News in a message. “I speak against these people, I criticize with them. That is why they don’t like me. They hate my guts.”

“I stand for the right thing. The people maybe, you know, use my name,” he said. “You know, ‘Oh Maninder.’”

“It’s all bullshit on my name.”

Gill stopped responding to Global News in June, and did not answer questions about Sandhar. The degree of his direct involvement remains unclear.

But two other Sikh-Canadians said Gill had also played a role when their family members were asked to make pro-India statements in order to get visas.

“Gill was involved,” one of them said.

In earlier interviews conducted by phone, messaging and in person, Gill denied any role in foreign interference and discussed helping community members.

“Yes I help my people, ” he said. “I have an open door policy. People come to me asking for help, sometimes a relative is dying in India, somebody is being exploited because they do not have a valid travel document.

“I guide them, provide them information,” he said.  “I have never denied that I have good relations with Indian consulate.”

“Why do consulates even exist in Canada? If everybody or anybody having good relations with them is a branded as a foreign agent? The government should simply shut them down.”

He said that when community members needed help, they approached the South Asian media, but he did not ask about anyone’s religious or political views.

“So if somebody come to us like, you know, ‘My father passed away, you know, I want to go right away. So please, can you call consulate office to get me visa?’”

“And we tell them, like you know, ‘Please kindly help them.’ They help,” he said. “Even all these Khalistani organizations, everybody’s keeping in touch with the consulate.”

The letter arrived in Sandhar’s email inbox on May 10, 2016, according to a copy shared with Global News.

With the subject line “sample letter,” it came from Jasbir Singh, who had incorporated Heritage Immigration & Income Tax Services Ltd. in 2015.

Global News found the company’s office in a Surrey industrial mall, next door to Gill’s Radio India, which is also the address of the Friends of Canada and India group.

A registered immigration consultant since January 2017, Jasbir Singh called Gill a “social acquaintance and neighbor in our place of business.”

He confirmed sending the letter to Sandhar but said he could not recall the details.

Asked if Gill had asked him to send the letter, he said: “No I don’t remember if ever Mr. Maninder Gill might have instructed me.”

“I think it should be Mr. Bikramjit who may have found from anybody that we might have, you know, assisted some other people to get the visa, so that would be the reason.”

Sandhar said he had no dealings with Jasbir Singh until speaking to Gill about a visa.

Such letters are common, the immigration consultant said, and his office may have saved it from use with a previous client and forwarded it to Sandhar.

“Maybe that’s an old letter somewhere sitting in our system.”

He said he had heard from “many people” about trouble with Indian visas.

“It’s very much prevalent in the community that they do get problems from the consulate sometimes.”

“We hear stories from here and there,” he said. “It should not happen.”

Those who need to visit India, but have been refused by the consulate, may choose to submit additional documentation that grants them “the mercy of getting a visa,” he explained.

He said his business prepared the applications, “and if somebody comes, they tell us ‘this is what my intent of submitting the application,’ then we type the letter depending on the client situation.”

The letter Sandhar received professed “deep respect and high regards for India.”

“I have never ever supported Khalistan or any other movement against India,” the letter continued. “Though I live in Canada, I still love India.”

Blank spaces were provided for Sandhar’s date of birth, passport number and signature.

Sandhar refused to sign it.

Instead, he met with consular officials to explain that he needed to travel to India for family reasons, but he was never going to stop talking about human rights.

“At the end of the day, we’re against injustice, and everybody should be talking about injustice,” he said he explained.

“They did allow us to get the visa,” he said. But the consulate withheld it until the last moment. He travelled to India in 2017.

The incident was “absolutely” foreign interference, he said.

“They’re trying to just disrupt somebody’s life, and trying to shame their mindset. You can’t do that. You’re playing with peoples’ lives.”

He did not report the matter to the RCMP or CSIS, but said he did notify the World Sikh Organization of Canada.

Now that the Canadian government has openly accused Indian officials of wrongdoing and expelled diplomats and consular officials, he said it’s time to tell stories like his.

“Everybody should come forward and just say whatever happened. I mean, lets move forward and tell people exactly what happened.

“The truth its always going to come out.”

By withholding visas, the Indian government is using the threat of not being able to see family as a pressure tactic against South Asian Canadians, he said.

It “feels horrible,” he added. “They’re sitting there and trying to tell you what you can do.

“I don’t know how many other people have gone through that. And the people who are middlemen, and all these people who are doing this, why?

“For what?”

He has not tried to return to India since the experience.

“I haven’t really applied to go back again, but I’m not really sure what’s going to happen when I do.”

Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca