Pallavi Pundir, an Indian journalist working as a Senior reporter at Vice World News, a media organisation based out of the United States, recently penned an article sympathising with the fugitive Khalistani leader Amritpal Singh, describing him as a ‘charismatic Sikh activist’ and downplaying his secessionist activities as a fight for ‘self-determination’ for India’s Sikh minority.
Titled ‘India Cuts Off Internet to 27 Million People to Catch One Man’, the article was published on Vice on March 22 and seeks to paint a sympathetic case for Waris Punjab De chief Amritpal Singh, who is currently on the lam after police launched a crackdown against his group.
Pundir, who graduated from the Asian College of Journalism and St Stephens’ College, institutes infamous for being leftist bastions, provides a favourable paradigm for Amritpal Singh, the Waris Punjab De head who made no bones about his disregard for India’s territorial sovereignty and support for the creation of a separate homeland for Sikhs, Khalistan.
In an attempt to brand Amritpal Singh as a victim of state excesses, Pundir goes on to claim that India has cut off internet services to 27 million people, a big fat lie as social media users on Twitter corrected her, highlighting how internet services continue to remain operational in Punjab.
While the Indian government had indeed temporarily suspended internet services in some parts of the state to trace down the fugitive Khalistani leader and throw a monkey wrench for his Khalistani aides, based out of India and abroad, who demonstrated a superior level of organisational and social media skills to vilify the Centre’s move to weed out separatist elements as ‘fascism’, ‘oppression’, and ‘majoritarianism’, as witnessed during the farmers’ protests when the Khalistani supporters and their leaders abroad mounted a social media campaign to push back against the government for arresting lumpen elements who resorted to rioting and vandalism under the pretext of peaceful demonstrations.
The Vice journalist, who also seems to be informed by woke gender politics currently taking root in the US, as witnessed in her Twitter bio where she identifies herself with pronouns she/her, posted a string of tweets, essentially excerpts from her article, providing a hagiographic account of Khalistan supporter Amritpal Singh and indulged in scaremongering with denigrating a pluralistic Indian society as a ‘Hindu-majority’ nation.
Pallavi Pundir of Vice World News simps on Amritpal Singh
Her article and Twitter thread, replete with lies and exaggerations, attempt to stoke paranoia among the assured and confident Sikh population of the country, who had never faced any religious persecution in the history of independent India, barring the 1984 pogrom when Congress leaders and supporters targeted the community after the assassination of former PM Indira Gandhi.
Pundir believes the fate of Amritpal Singh, who is on the run, could precipitate a serious crisis in India and touch off massive unrest—a dog-whistling of sorts to Singh’s supporters and a veiled threat to the Indian government should they decide to bring the fugitive Khalistani leader to book.
The author also seems enamoured by the ‘meteoric’ rise and the ‘charisma’ of Amritpal Singh, notwithstanding reports that said he was disloyal and unfaithful to many of her partners and even resorted to blackmailing them with obscene pictures to get rid of them.
“Singh called for self-determination for India’s Sikh minority & even separation of Punjab (India’s only Sikh-majority state) from the rest of the country. Is he a civil rights figure fighting for Sikh rights or a “national security threat”? The answer depends on who you ask,” Pundir tweets.
While the Indian government had termed Amritpal Singh a ‘national security threat’, given his ability to mobilise Khalistani elements to create unrest in India, Pundir goes on to lionise the wanted Waris Punjab De leader, creating a hero out of him as she characterises him as a ‘Sikh activist’ fighting for the rights of Sikhs in a Hindu-majority India.
“His energy, bluntness & online presence has breathed new life into Sikh nationalism,” says Pundir, trying to legitimise separatist propaganda that is propped up by neighbouring Pakistan and its Khalistani stooges based out of Canada, the United States, the UK, and other countries.
The author then goes on to downplay the character of the Khalistan movement, minimising it as a ‘decades-old struggle’ to achieve greater Sikh autonomy in India. What she would not say is that the ultimate goal of the Khalistan movement is to secede Punjab out of the Indian Union and create a separate nation for Sikhs. But for American and western readers who may not be aware of the real intentions and aims of the movement, she scrupulously portrays it as a struggle for “greater autonomy” and “rights” for the Sikh minority.
To lend credence to her separatist narrative sympathetic to the Khalistan movement, Pundir vilifies the Indian government and alludes to its actions to protect her sovereignty as unjust, alleging that there have been enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, alleged torture, and extrajudicial killings in their attempt to quell Khalistan sentiments. As expected, she does not bother to furnish proof for the same and cites propagandist tweets by Khalistani leaders such as Jagmeet Singh to continue maligning the Centre.
She quotes Amritpal Singh’s venomous assertions against India and couches them as a fight for ‘Sikh empowerment’. “Whenever you depend on state structures, they control your fate, including your politics as a community. Our hope is to provide alternative parallel structures that provide us independence,” Pundir quotes Singh as saying.
And quite predictably, Singh is also hailed for his involvement in ‘drug rehabilitation campaigns’, a hackneyed trick often used by cheerleaders of Khalistani supporters to project them as innocents and stoke public sentiments against police action against such anti-social elements.
The Vice author even tried to make light of the threat issued by Amritpal Singh against PM Modi when he warned him of meeting a similar fate as former PM Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1984.
Pakistan-backed ISI trained Khalistan leader Amritpal Singh
On March 21, a Hindustan Times report revealed that Pakistani spy agency ISI trained pro-Khalistan separatist leader and chief of Waris Punjab De Amritpal Singh in Georgia before coming to India. Furthermore, it has been revealed that Singh had close links to the banned Khalistani terrorist organisation Sikhs For Justice. HT quoted unnamed officials in India’s counter-terrorism apparatus saying key portions of the conspiracy were hatched in Dubai.
A person aware of intelligence analysis of Waris Punjab De chief Amritpal said, “During his stay in Dubai, which is a hub for ISI agents, Amritpal Singh was offered money as part of a well-orchestrated plan to revive militancy in Punjab. He was sent to Georgia for training by ISI before his flight to India.” Amritpal Singh is a part of the conspiracy hatched by Pakistan to revive militancy in Punjab, the officer said.
He added, “Amritpal Singh also has links with SFJ and even campaigned for the latter’s activities on social media.” Singh was close to Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, founder of SFJ, who is a designated terrorist under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
The motive of the article in the international media organisation cannot be mistaken. At a time when Indian law enforcement officials are involved in finding the whereabouts of Khalistan leader Amritpal Singh, secessionists and their lackeys in the media are busy painting him as a hero and a “rights activist” in a desperate hope that such propaganda efforts would help legitimise their cause of Khalistan and scrub clean Singh’s antecedents to pressurise the Centre into being lenient against him.
