Time Magazine, the renowned New York-based magazine interviewed pro-Khalistan activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a designated terrorist under the Indian law, sparking backlash from Indian social media users.
A dual US-Canadian citizen, Pannun is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a New York-based separatist group advocating an independent Sikh homeland. This month, Pannun triggered a security alert among Indian agencies after he threatened to blow up Air India flights.
India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) is currently probing the bombing threat.
Pannun has also been accused in India of inciting calls to violence against Indian diplomats stationed in the US and Canada.
FT reported that the US warned India over its alleged involvement in the so-called plot and President Joe Biden had even raised the matter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the duo’s meeting on the margins of the G-20 Summit in New Delhi back in September.
A statement from India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) hours after the FT report noted that Washington had shared “some inputs pertaining to nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others”.
“The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow up action. On its part, India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well,” the MEA said in its statement.
‘A Terrorist Mouthpiece’
Abhinav Prakash, the vice-president of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), described Time as a “terrorist mouthpiece” for featuring Pannun’s interview.
BJYM is the youth wing of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Terrorist Mouthpiece: Time's Interview with Khalistan Terrorist Enrages Indians
© Photo : X/@Abhina_Prakash
Meanwhile, former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal slammed western agencies for “giving international respectability to a 'known terrorist'.
Sibal called Time’s interview a “vicious intention to encourage another terrorist front against India”.
Hindol Sengupta, an Indian author, reckoned that Pannun’s interview in Time wasn’t an 'accident' and had been done 'deliberately'.
Shesh Paul Vaid, a former Director General of Police (DGP) of erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state, questioned if western media were encouraging secession of India by giving space to “a designated terrorist, drugs peddler and a criminal”.
Shesh Paul Vaid, a former Director General of Police (DGP) of erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state, questioned if western media were encouraging secession of India by giving space to “a designated terrorist, drugs peddler and a criminal”.
“India’s terrorist isn’t your terrorist, but your terrorists are India’s. Stop this hypocrisy,” the former police official demanded.