Gunmen opened fire on a truck carrying a Sikh political leader near Sacramento.
The incident is one of several attacks against Sikh separatists in North America in recent months.
Satinder Pal Singh Raju, an organizer with the Khalistan movement, which calls for Sikhs to have a homeland of their own in India’s Punjab region, survived the attack on Interstate 505 about 30 miles west of Sacramento in unincorporated Yolo County. The California Highway Patrol was notified of the incident at 11:37 p.m. on Aug. 11, CHP spokesman Rodney Fitzhugh said.
A video posted on social media by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer and spokesperson for Sikhs for Justice, shows four bullet holes in the driver's window of Raju's car, with two additional dents in the front window near the passenger side.
Raju was a passenger in the car, in which he was travelling with two friends on their way to a restaurant for a late-night dinner.
His organization, Sikhs for Justice, believes it was an attempted murder. Authorities have not made any arrests or announced a motive.
Pannun was the target of a foiled assassination attempt in the United States in 2023, which U.S. officials said was linked to the Indian government. The Indian government has denied involvement. Pannun has been charged with terrorism in India for advocating an independent Sikh state and clashed with the ruling government of Narendra Modi.
“The Modi 3.0 regime continues its policy of transnational repression to violently suppress the global Khalistan referendum campaign seeking the liberation of Punjab from Indian occupation,” Pannun said in a statement on August 19. “India’s incessant transnational violence cannot stop the voting process initiated by the referendum activists.”
A vehicle window is pockmarked with bullet holes after Satinder Pal Singh Raju was shot while traveling on Interstate 505 west of Sacramento.
(Gurpatwant Singh Pannun)
“This is yet another example of Indian aggression,” Pannun added in an interview with The Times. “But this is the life we are forced to live as part of this group.”
Pannun said Raju and the Sikhs for Justice team had recently organized an event in Calgary in late July, as well as events in San Francisco and Sacramento earlier this year.
The meetings were part of the Sikh independence referendums the organization has been holding for several years in the United States and other countries. The voting events, which this year attracted tens of thousands of Sikhs in California, are nonbinding and largely symbolic.
Speaking to The Times, Raju, who works as a truck driver, said the violence would not deter his political activism.
“The day of our death is already written. I am happy that we survived. But this will not change the work we do,” said Raju, who said he was currently helping Sikh activists organise a referendum in November in New Zealand.
Raju was a close associate of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was killed in 2023 in Surrey in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The shooting reignited fears among Sikhs amid allegations of a growing cross-border crackdown. In May, three Indian men were charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder over Nijjar’s killing.
Earlier this year, the homes of two Sikh activists were hit by gunfire in Surrey and the city of Brampton, Ontario, Canada. No one was injured in either incident, but Sikh separatists say they were also attempted murders.
