STORY: Dr. Jasmeet Bains is used to risky situations.
She's a physician who specializes in addiction...
And the first Sikh-American elected to the California assembly.
She's speaking here with constituents in a city southeast of Los Angeles about a new bill, all under the watchful eye of local police and a hired security team.
Last year, she said four men who appeared to be of Indian origin came to her office.
It was shortly after California adopted her resolution declaring the 1984 killing of thousands of Sikhs in India a genocide.
“One of the people stood up and said, ‘I will do whatever it takes to go after you, Dr. Bains. And this is an open challenge to you’ and started getting aggressive in my face.”
That was just the beginning.
“My mailbox got broken into. There’s been random cars outside my house taking pictures. There’s been weird texts. I don’t answer phone calls I don’t recognize anymore, I wait til it goes to voicemail….” //
“At first I was like, I can just deal, whatever. Like, you know, I’ll record what they’re saying. But it got a little overwhelming to the point where I worried about me having, as a mental health specialist - I also have to worry about the impact to me personally.”
Bains reported the incident at her office to local police, and the surveillance of her home to the state assembly Sergeant-at-Arms.
JUSTIN TRUDEAU: "Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty."
Last year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his administration had credible evidence that the Indian government was involved in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader there, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
After that, Bains said the Sergeant-at-Arms conducted a security assessment at her home and urged her to take precautions.
And that the FBI contacted her about the office threats in October.
Reuters spoke to 19 Sikh community leaders who said that they or their organizations have been threatened or harassed in the U.S. or Canada over the past year.
Three of them are elected officials in the U.S.
The Sikhs Reuters spoke to described harassment online, surveillance, doxxing and "swatting," or filing a false police report to trigger a law enforcement response.
Seven Sikh activists said the FBI or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have warned them their lives could be in danger, without specifying the source of the threat.
The founder of a Sikh advocacy group in the U.S. who had received an FBI warning shared this video with Reuters, showing what appears to be surveillance on his California home.
He said he reported it.
And in the Canadian province of British Columbia, Sikh activist Moninder Singh said he received a warning from police:
“The 'duty to warn' was that there was an imminent threat of assassination against my life.” // “...I asked questions around where the threat was coming from. They weren't able to tell me. I did make a comment saying that you're from the INSET Division. I understand that you deal with foreign threats, and, for me, this would be India. And they said they couldn't confirm or deny that.”
Many of the threats described to Reuters originated from anonymous accounts on X... Others came from unknown phone numbers and anonymous text messages, the activists said.
Reuters was unable to determine the origins of the threats.
In Canada, four Indian nationals are facing charges of murder and conspiracy for the fatal shooting Nijjar in British Columbia.
In the U.S., Indian national Nikhil Gupta has pleaded not guilty to trying to arrange the murder of a separatist leader at the behest of an Indian intelligence official.
He is awaiting trial.
India has denied involvement in both cases.
In Nijjar's case, India's High Commissioner to Canada called him a "designated terrorist."
Both men supported a fringe demand to break away from India and create an independent state called Khalistan.
The movement led to a violent insurgency in India's Punjab state in the 1980s and 1990s before it was crushed by Delhi.
The FBI has warned the Sikh community more broadly about "transnational repression," or efforts by a foreign state to intimidate or threaten political opponents in another country.
At least six activists said they suspect that India's government or its supporters could be behind the harassment, although they acknowledged it can be hard to prove.
The Indian embassy in Washington and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.
Two FBI officials told Reuters it can be difficult to determine whether threats are emanating from a foreign government or criminal elements using similar tactics to try to extort victims.
As for Bains in California, she says her life has changed:
“I don’t go alone anywhere anymore. I make sure my staff is with me at all times, which is hard for someone as independent as me.”
She isn't sure whether she has experienced transnational repression by India...
But she wants state law enforcement to be able to identify repression and respond to it.
The bill she's discussing with constituents, she says, would do just that.
"If I'm experiencing it, more people are experiencing it." // “I’m not a person that gets afraid, I’m a person who wants action.”
