Canadian drug cartels trying to revive Khalistan movement in India

New Delhi: The death and the popularity of Punjabi singer Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu or Sidhu Moose Wala, who had got caught with the wrong set of people when he was alive, is being turned into what the Indian agencies see as the last attempt to revive the defunct Khalistani movement, an operation with large scale ramifications, which is being handled from Canada and Pakistan by involving the narco-terror ring that is run by Indo-Canadian gangsters who operate out of Canada.
The Indian agencies, for a long time and even before his death, had been tracking the links of Moose Wala with the Indo-Canadian criminal network, which has penetrated and is entrenched deeply within the Canadian law enforcement, including its intelligence agencies.
Indian officials, who spoke to The Sunday Guardian over the past two weeks on this topic, said that twin operations being mounted from Canada—that of generating income through drugs by selling that to people in India and sending the drugs to European countries and using these Indo-Canadian drug cartels to revive the now defunct Khalistan sentiment—are one of the biggest concerns for relevant Indian officers, even bigger than what they face from the traditional anti-India agencies in Pakistan.
According to them, those who have “pro-Khalistan” sentiments, are now exercising significant influence inside Canada’s government offices because of the electoral power that some in their community wields in that country, which has fewer than 4 crore people who vote for 338 MPs who sit in the House of Commons.
In the MPs’ elections, where roughly 1 lakh voters cast their votes, even 5,000-10,000 votes make a difference between winning and losing and this is where the radical elements come into play by using their following among the diaspora to decide who will win and who will not.
Apart from the radical elements, descendants of Pakistani Army officials, who migrated to Canada in the latter part of 1900 and are now naturalised Canadian citizens, are occupying crucial posts in different of fices in Canada and are contributing in nurturing, protecting and expanding the narco-terrorism ring that operates from Canada, and which has now become the biggest hub for sending drugs to European countries and the United Kingdom.
The actual consignments of these drugs, as a part of elaborate planning, are not allowed to enter Canada, where the ringmasters of these cartels reside and operate from. “The money is being rolled out from Canada for procurement of drugs from Afghanistan. Then the drugs reach other countries including India from where they are sent to European countries. The issue has been raised at the government to government level but because the administrative setup in Ottawa is sympathetic to these cartels, nothing happens,” a senior official, with one of the agencies in Delhi required to keep an eye on narco-terrorism and its ramifications, told The Sunday Guardian.
Moose Wala, as per irrefutable evidence gathered by the agencies and shared with The Sunday Guardian, was approached by Armenia-based gangster Gaurav @ Lucky Patial through Mandeep Singh Dhaliwal, a close friend of Moose Wala and a gangster and someone who was later arrested by Punjab police from Kharar in August last year.
A company, “Thug Life Records”, owned by Patial, sponsored the initial few songs of Moose Wala. It was during 2016, when Moose Wala was studying in Sheridan College, Brampton, Ontario that the narco-terror cartel started supporting his musical launches.
Significantly, Mandeep Dhaliwal had campaigned for Moose Wala during the Punjab Assembly elections in 2022, which he contested on a Congress ticket, but lost.
There are multiple musical records still available online that show the link between Thug Life Records, Dhaliwal and Moose Wala.
Shaganpreet Singh, a close friend of Moose Wala and his event manager, according to reports, was instrumental in helping three shooters stay at a house in Jalvayu Vihar, Zikarpur, Panchkula. They were on the payroll of Lucky Patial and were tasked to kill Vicky Middhukhera, an Akali Dal leader, who was shot dead on 7 August 2021 in Mohali.
Middhukhera, according to officials, was killed, as he was interfering in the “business activities” of Lucky Patial.
This was followed by the killing of Sandeep Nagal Ambian, a well-known kabaddi player, who did not pay heed to Lucky Patial’s demand, which was related to two “kabaddi federations” in Ontario, one of which had substantial investment from Patial and other gangsters. The “National Kabaddi Federation of Ontario” , which Patial was supporting, failed to generate income as all well-known players pledged their allegiance to “Major League Kabaddi”, which was owned by Ambian. He was killed on 14 March outside Jalandhar.
This was the time when the Canada-based gangster, Goldy Brar, who is a major player in the narco-terror ring that flourishes in Canada and the India-based gangster, Lawrence Bishnoi, came together to decide on how to avenge the deaths of Middhukhera and Ambian.
Officials say that their earlier target was Mandeep Dhaliwal but then they decided to eliminate Moose Wala because he was a “bigger target”, more valuable and close to Lucky Patial, and secondly Dhaliwal had fled to Australia and had gone underground unlike Moose Wala, who was roaming freely courtesy the police protection and the bullet proof Fortuner vehicle he had.
What has also confirmed the links between the slain singer with these Indo-Canadian drug networks and his directly or indirectly supporting the Khalistan movement is the “SYL” song that was officially released by his supporters three weeks after Moose Wala died. The song has now been banned by the Indian government.
The song, among other things, glorifies one of the earliest Khalistan terrorists, Balwinder Singh Jattana, who in July 1990, along with three of his accomplices, shot dead Chief Engineer and Superintending Engineer M.S. Sikri and Avtar Aulakh while they were in an official meeting regarding the construction of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal in Sector 26, Chandigarh. He was later shot dead in an encounter in September 1991 at Sahugarh, Fathehgarh Sahib, Punjab. The killing of the two engineers had led to the stopping of the construction of the SYL for a long time.
Political entities based in Punjab, who have not shied away from openly supporting Khalistani sentiments, have recently used the death of Moose Wala to come to power. The radical Simranjit Singh Mann, who heads the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), a splinter group of SAD, used Moose Wala as an emotive issue to seek votes for himself in the Sangrur parliamentary bypolls that were held on 23 June, less than four weeks after the death of Moose Wala. The same Mann, who could not win the Amargarh Assembly seat during the February Punjab elections, won the Sangrur seat with a comfortable margin. Officials believe that this is just the start of Moose Wala being used as an emotive issue to foment Khalistani sentiments by radical elements for political gains.
Pakistan-based government agencies, which till now were silently supporting those who were behind Moose Wala, after his death, decided to make their “love” for Moose Wala public.
On 24 July 2024, Moose Wala was posthumously conferred with the “Waris Shah International Award”, which is given by a Pakistan-based literary society “Punjabi Virsa”. The society claims to award Punjabi writers and litterateurs who “promote” Punjab culture. Moose Wala became the first singer to be given this award.
The said award was given one month after the release of the SYL song, which among other things shows bomb blast being carried out at the SYL canal, a sentiment that Khalistani elements have been propagating for decades now.
According to officials, the said award, the last Indian recipient of which was Amrita Pritam, is given to those who spread the message of Waris Shah, a Sufi poet who talked about peace and love, something which is totally different to what Moose Wala did, of promoting violence and gun culture.
This was done by the Pakistani agencies, who are desperate to reignite the Khalistan movement, to cash in on the emotions that have been generated by the death of Moose Wala and build his image as someone who supported the acts carried out by Khalistani “hero” like Balwinder Jattana.
“The long term plan is to make and present Moose Wala as someone who supported Khalistan. The fact that he too spoke about it through his songs will make this dangerous theory easy to sell among the young people of Punjab,” another official told The Sunday Guardian.
“The damaging ramifications of giving harbour to these narco-terror leaders, will sooner than later, be felt by the very Canadian politicians who are protecting them now. It is a matter of record with every country that is affected by these drug cartels that Canada has become a hub of moving drugs from one country to the other. Not now, not five years later, but soon Canada will be on the dubious list of countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan that support narco-terror groups if the officials there don’t wake up to the land mines that they are sitting on,” the official quoted above said.