“[Sikhs] may be Canadian citizens, but we’re not Canadians. We’re not treated as Canadians, we’re not given the same rights and privileges. We will always be the outsider.”

For the WSO’s Singh, it doesn’t feel like real action will be taken until something dire happens.

“I think the only thing that’s going to move the needle is when they kill another prominent Sikh activist, but I don’t see anything changing until then,” Singh said.

“[Our] community is being actively targeted on an ongoing basis by a foreign government — including as far as Jagmeet Singh, who was the leader of the NDP, a federal party — and our government ignores all of that and says, ‘Ah well, we’re going to start rebuilding ties.’”

“It’s a feeling of helplessness. We’ve made as much noise about it as we possibly could, and it seems that people just don’t care,” Singh told PressProgress.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) has called the Bishnoi gang a “proxy” that the government of India uses “to target Sikhs in Canada with murders, extortions and other violent crimes,” a charge echoed by Sikh Federation (Canada) but denied by India.

The Bishnoi gang, a transnational criminal organization operating primarily out of India which was recently designated a terrorist entity by the government of Canada, has been tied to much of the violence, including a number of shootings across the province.

Earlier this month, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said they had removed three individuals from Canada in relation to extortion-related investigations.

“To date, the CBSA has initiated immigration investigations into 78 foreign nationals who may be inadmissible,” said CBSA in a statement.

Prominent members of BC’s Sikh Punjabi community, including musicians and businesspeople, have been targeted by violence or extortion in recent months, with more than 100 instances so far reported in 2025.