Follow the Money Behind Khalistan

The Khalistan campaign operating from North America is not a spontaneous expression of diaspora grievance. It is a sustained political and organisational enterprise. Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has run a multi-year series of non-binding “referendums” across Canadian and American cities. It maintains legal and advocacy infrastructure, stages regular public events, produces propaganda, and supports legal defence and lobbying efforts. These activities require continuous funding for venues, logistics, materials, personnel, communications, and travel. Many of the people involved entered Canada or the United States as asylum seekers or temporary residents who described themselves as having fled with few resources. The operational scale of the campaign raises a basic question: where does the money come from?

Canada’s own government has already recorded part of the answer. The Department of Finance’s 2025 Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risks in Canada states that Babbar Khalsa International and the International Sikh Youth Federation—both listed terrorist entities under the Criminal Code in the Politically Motivated Violent Extremism category—have been observed by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to receive financial support originating from Canada. The assessment notes that these groups are suspected of raising funds in Canada and elsewhere. Previously they maintained extensive fundraising networks; today they operate through smaller pockets of committed individuals. Documented methods include soliciting donations from diaspora communities, abuse of non-profit and charitable organisations, cryptocurrencies, and criminal activity. CSIS has separately confirmed that a subset of Canada-based Khalistani extremists continues to use the country as a base for the promotion, fundraising, or planning of violence primarily in India.

Criminal proceeds form a documented financing channel for listed entities operating on Canadian soil. Illegal drug trafficking is identified as the highest money-laundering threat in Canada, involving billions of dollars annually. A subset of Punjabi-Canadian organised crime groups has long controlled significant portions of the cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl trade moving through Western Canada and Ontario’s trucking corridors. Since 2007, more than 200 gang-related homicides in British Columbia alone have been linked to rival Punjabi-Canadian gangs contesting that trade. Trucking companies have repeatedly served as cover for bulk shipments; major seizures, including hundreds of kilograms of cocaine in Peel Region, have involved Indo-Canadian suspects. Indian investigators and some Canadian law-enforcement sources have pointed to the possibility that a portion of these revenues is diverted toward diaspora political campaigns, legal defence funds, and organisational support. In at least one reported case, financial intelligence traced tens of thousands of dollars from a raided drug house to a registered Canadian charity associated with pro-Khalistan causes.

Firearms and broader organised-crime activity sit alongside the drug trade. High-profile figures involved in referendum organising have faced firearms charges. Broader Punjabi-Canadian gang networks have been repeatedly linked to illegal guns, extortion, auto theft, and contract violence. Stolen Canadian vehicles have themselves been flagged in federal risk assessments as a proceeds-of-crime stream that can reach listed groups. These are not abstract concerns; they are patterns repeatedly observed by Canadian police and intelligence agencies.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) appears in multiple independent assessments as an external sponsor. Intelligence agencies have reported that the ISI has helped establish and sustain drug-cartel networks involving Punjabi-Canadian operators because traditional diaspora donations have proved insufficient to maintain desired levels of activity. Recent intelligence inputs (as of October 2026) indicate that the ISI is reassessing its spending as grassroots support for Khalistan weakens on the ground in Punjab and some former backers distance themselves from what they describe as a criminal syndicate involved in drugs, arms trafficking, and extortion. Nonetheless, the agency continues to channel resources, cultivate gangs, and back overseas groups. The historical record is clear: Babbar Khalsa and related outfits have long combined political fundraising with smuggling, extortion, and violence, most catastrophically in the 1985 Air India bombing that remains Canada’s worst terrorist attack.

The logical next step is to follow the specific money that sustains SFJ referendums, legal efforts, propaganda, and organisational infrastructure—through financial intelligence analysis, charity audits, and proceeds-of-crime investigations.

Asylum and immigration systems are not designed to underwrite long-term transnational political campaigns or to shield the proceeds of crime. When networks that present themselves as resource-poor maintain multi-year organisational capacity across two countries, the funding sources become a matter of national security and the integrity of those systems. Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies should treat the financing of the Khalistan campaign as a priority for rigorous, evidence-based scrutiny.