Before May 17, 2018, both Bhagat Singh Brar and Parvkar Singh Dulai were free to travel anywhere in the world because they had no criminal record and were law abiding citizens in Canada. Dulai even worked on the Air India defence team as an investigator years ago and he was well known to both CSIS and RCMP for his work on the Air India case as well as being an organizer of the annual Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtans in Surrey as part of the Dashmesh Darbar Gurdwara team, which had floats that highlighted the results of India’s human rights abuses in the killings of thousands of innocent Sikh men. “India has a long history of labelling Sikh advocacy, those Sikhs who talk about human rights issues or Khalistan, as extremists or terrorists,” Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO,  told Global News. “It’s a common theme that has continued since the ‘80s, so where there are allegations of Sikh extremism I am generally quite skeptical.”

By Mr. X with News Files

SURREY – Is Canada doing India’s dirty work by putting two Sikh-Canadians on the “No Fly” list without any credible evidence?

Or are they using tainted information from Indian agencies to justify putting Bhaghat Singh Brar and Parvkar Singh Dulai on the list to satisfy India after the agreement between the two countries following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s controversial 2018 trip to India?

 Before May 17, 2018, both Brar and Dulai were free to travel anywhere in the world because they had no criminal record and were law abiding citizens in Canada. Dulai even worked on the Air India defence team as an investigator years ago and he was well known to both CSIS and RCMP for his work on the Air India case as well as being an organizer of the annual Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtans in Surrey as part of the Dashmesh Darbar Gurdwara team, which had floats that highlighted the results of India’s human rights abuses in the killings of thousands of innocent Sikh men.

But suddenly after years, even decades of being free to travel by air, both Brar and Dulai were put on the sinister no-fly list by Canadian intelligence agencies and they couldn’t understand why.

Canadian Security And Intelligence Service (CSIS) first put the men for the no-fly list in 2018 and an advisory committee that included CSIS, RCMP and Transport Canada representatives later decided to keep them on the list.

“The service believes that Brar is a Canada-based Khalistani extremist who has been engaged in [redacted] terrorist-related activities, particularly in fundraising in support of terrorist attacks overseas,” according to a secret case brief report obtained by Global News.

Brar was also involved in “promoting extremism, including the radicalization of youth, with the aim of achieving Khalistan independence; and attack planning and facilitation, including weapons procurement, to conduct attacks in India,” the documents alleged.

Dulai, a 42-year-old Surrey, B.C., resident, “is suspected to be a facilitator of terrorist-related activities, and has shown an ongoing pattern of involvement within the Khalistani extremist milieu,” the documents allege.

This all came as a shock to Dulai and Brar, who couldn’t believe that Canadian authorities used tainted evidence from India with no credibility at all to put them on the no-fly list. And after a year of hounding politicians to answer questions as to why, they were forced to go to the courts to get justice.

Brar and Dulai’s case is nearing the end with various case conference and examination of evidence taking place over the next few weeks after a legal ruling by the court on June 30th to review evidence which the Canadian government didn’t want. A decision is expected on the case in 60 days.

 Recently, Global News was alerted to the so-called secret case files by the agencies so that they could take their side to the Canadian public before the verdict, with reports suggesting that the two men were placed on the no-fly list due to their connections with Khalistani extremists who are allegedly working with Pakistan’s ISI on planning attacks in India. The secret files lay out tainted evidence from Indian agencies that Brar, whose father is former International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) member, played a part in a foiled 2017 attack in India. There is not much on Dulai other than that he is a business partner of Brar and was organizing Vaiskahi parade with floats glorifying Sikh martyrs, which he said he had no part in designing and was the work of others.

India and Pakistan have been playing tit-for-tat terrorism games across their borders for decades, using extremists of every kind, Sikh, Muslim, Hindu and so forth but people close to Brar and Dulai say this is another tactic by India to silence Sikhs abroad about a litany of human rights abuses from the country’s troubled past and present.

They say Canada is appeasing India following Trudeau’s 2018 trip and they are using Brar and Dulai as examples of stop the democratic voices of dissent and Sikhs who continue to seek Khalistan as a Sikh homeland in India. This is extremely troubling as Canada is allowing India to reach its shores in trying to suppress democratic dissent.

“There is a lot of talk about China and it’s espionage and reach in Canada but very little talk about what India is doing in Canada with its propaganda and reach,” said a source familiar with international intelligence gathering.

“There have been a number of high profile cases of interference in Canada by India and this no-fly case is one that seems deep rooted in its desire to shut Sikhs up in Canada and abroad. I’ve looked at the evidence disclosed in the Global news report. There is no way any western country and its intelligence agencies can rely on it to do this to people. In intelligence circles, you need a history of the individual(s) pattern of such crimes and even evidence of links like money transfers and such before you take action. And in the cases of these two men, they have no criminal history at all. In fact, Dulai is well known to both RCMP and CSIS for his work on the Air India trial so it’s not like suddenly he’s going to be dangerous for no reason and without any history of violence,” he said.

There is a lot of skepticism in the Sikh-Canadian community in the way that Canadian agencies are blindly cooperating with Indian agencies without due diligence and the evidence in this case points that out.

Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO), was blunt in his assessment of the case, saying there was reason for skepticism of such allegations in the wake of a counter-terrorism co-operation agreement between Canada and India.

India has long complained that Canada is a base for extremists active in separatist violence even though there has no violence of any kind since the 1980s, more than 30 years ago. But during Trudeau’s trip to India, the national security advisers of Canada and India signed a co-operation framework on Feb. 23, 2018. In it, they pledged to work more closely to fight terrorist groups such as the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF).

When the deal was signed, the WSO raised concerns that intelligence shared by Indian authorities would be tainted by torture and motivated by attempts to silence Sikh activists.

“India has a long history of labelling Sikh advocacy, those Sikhs who talk about human rights issues or Khalistan, as extremists or terrorists,” Singh told Global News. “It’s a common theme that has continued since the ‘80s, so where there are allegations of Sikh extremism I am generally quite skeptical.”

The specific mention of the ISYF in the government statement on the agreement was also cause for concern, Singh said, because he was not aware that it or any other Sikh groups had been active in violence in 30 years.

“To claim that this is an active threat, it lacks authenticity. It seems, once again, more ideologically based, to silence those voices that talk about Khalistan and to label them as members of ISYF or those banned groups, as opposed to a real threat.”

Mr. X is an investigative writer-journalist at large. You too can write under the Mr. X pseudonym if you have a juicy story, column or analysis.