A pre-recorded message in the voice of Khalistan separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun was sent on the landline of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in July, threatening bomb attacks on the Indian Parliament and Red Fort area, the Union government has told an Unlawful Activities Prevention Act tribunal, reported The Hindu on Thursday.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) MPs AA Rahim and V Sivadasan also received the same message on their mobile phones, according to the newspaper.

In an order dated January 27, the tribunal upheld the Centre’s ban on Pannun’s Sikhs for Justice organisation for another five years. The organisation was first banned in 2019 in five years, and the order was extended for another five years on July 10.

Pannun, an American and Canadian citizen, is a proponent of Khalistan, an independent state for Sikhs sought by some groups. He was declared an “individual terrorist” under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in 2020.

Since 2021, Sikhs for Justice has organised several unofficial “referendums” in foreign countries, including Canada, on whether a separate Sikh homeland should be carved out of India.

At least 122 cases have been registered against Sikh for Justice by several state police forces and the National Investigation Agency since 2018. A total of 105 people have been arrested in the cases so far, according to The Hindu.

In the alleged voice sent to the defence minister, Pannun claimed that Sikhs were facing “existential threats” under the Indian government and warned MPs to stay home if they “did not want to experience the Khalistan referendum”, reported The Indian Express, citing the Centre’s affidavit to the tribunal.

“The call originates from an international number and efforts are being made to identify the user with assistance from Interpol,” the Ministry of Home Affairs was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

The ministry has also stated that persons connected with Sikhs for Justice were involved in at least two cases of railway sabotage in Punjab in 2023.

On March 14, 2023, Sikhs for Justice members removed the clips of a track at Lehra Mahout village in Bhatinda, the affidavit alleged, according to The Hindu.

Four days later, they allegedly removed around 50 clamps from the railway track near Pathrala Railway Station on the directions of Pannun, “thereby endangering the life of passengers travelling by the train, halting the economic activity as well as causing terror in the minds of the people”.

Pannun and his associates also asked “pro-Khalistani elements to sabotage railway tracks in Punjab to cause derailment or accident of passenger and goods trains, particularly those ferrying migrant labourers to take revenge of recent killings of PKEs based abroad”, the ministry reportedly told the tribunal.

It added that Sikhs for Justice was “inciting the Christian community in Manipur to raise their voices for a separate country” and the people of Tamil Nadu to raise flags of “Dravidstan”. The Centre also accused the group of “stoking Muslim sentiments by raising the bogey of minority persecution”, reported The Hindu.

On January 15, the Ministry of Home Affairs stated that a high-powered enquiry committee, set up to investigate inputs from the United States about an alleged foiled plot to kill Pannun, has recommended “legal action against an individual”.

The ministry, however, did not name the individual against whom action has been recommended.

New Delhi set up the committee in November 2023 after a Financial Times report said that the US administration had foiled a plot to assassinate Pannun on American soil.

The report also said that the US had warned India about concerns that the Narendra Modi government was involved in the conspiracy. Indian officials expressed “surprise and concern” in response to the allegations, according to the White House.

In September, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York summoned National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, businessman Nikhil Gupta and Samant Goel, the former chief of India’s foreign intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing, among others in the case.

The Indian government had called the summons “completely unwarranted and unsubstantiated”.