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TOI correspondent from Washington: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), now with an Indian-American nationalist Kash Patel at the helm, on Thursday announced that it has arrested alleged Pakistan-backed Khalistani terrorist Harpreet Singh, wanted in India and living illegally in California.
The FBI field office in Sacramento, which apprehended him, said Harpreet Singh had entered the U.S from Mexico and had been evading capture by using untraceable burner phones and encrypted applications.
Agents from the FBI’s Legal Attaché office in New Delhi informed Sacramento that Singh was wanted in connection with multiple terror attacks across Punjab, the Bureau said, pointing to close cooperation between the two countries since Patel took charge of the agency.
“This case reinforces the importance of international cooperation in apprehending those who threaten global security,” the Bureau said, noting that Singh is suspected to have collaborated with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Khalistani terrorist group Babbar Khalsa International (BKI).
A photograph released by the FBI Sacramento showed a portly Singh being held by a female FBI agent and male police officer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Harpreet Singh, also known as Happy Passia or Jora, is said to have homed into Sacramento, a farming area with a large Sikh community, after crossing over illegally from Mexico in 2021, having arrived there from the United Kingdom. The district is represented by Indian-American Congressman Ami Bera and has several wealthy Sikh farmers with huge tracts of farmland.
A social media account in the name of “Harpreet Singh Khalistan” placed him living in Fresno, two hours south of Sacramento, which also has many Sikh farmers growing tree nuts (almonds, walnuts and pistachio) and stone fruits (peaches, plums and prunes). Some of them are second- and third-generation farmers who are pro-Khalistan despite sketchy ties to India.
Alleged to be a key operative of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), a Khalistani terrorist group with historical ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Harpreet Singh is accused of being the mastermind of several grenade attacks in Punjab in recent months targeting religious sites and police posts in an effort to revive the Khalistani movement. Indian authorities say he worked closely with Pakistan-based BKI operative Harwinder Singh Sandhu aka Rinda, to orchestrate attacks, recruit operatives, and conduct reconnaissance in Punjab.
Following a series of attacks in Punjab starting 2022, India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) declared him an absconder and offered a Rs 5 lakh reward in January 2025 for information leading to his capture. They followed up by filing a chargesheet in March against him and three others (including Rinda) for a grenade attack in Chandigarh, while also alerting US authorities to his presence in California.
The arrest, and the extradition earlier this month of former Pakistani army doctor Tahawwur Rana, points to rapid improvement in cooperation between New Delhi and Washington following the appointment of Kash Patel as the FBI Director in the Trump administration. India had earlier expressed frustration that the US, under the Biden administration, and Canada, under the Trudeau dispensation, were giving violent pro-Khalistani extremists a free run, even after they had attacked Indian missions and directly threatened Indian diplomats.
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