Banned Sikh Film Screens in Surrey as BC Moves Against Trans-Pacific Narco Network
British Columbia's South Asian community is in the news this week on two fronts that could hardly be more different in character. In Surrey — home to one of the largest Punjabi communities outside India — residents are filling community halls to watch Satluj, a film about Sikh human rights martyr Jaswant Singh Khalra that has been banned in India and pulled from a streaming platform just days after its release. Across the Lower Mainland, British Columbia's civil forfeiture authorities have filed a landmark claim in BC Supreme Court, moving to seize more than eleven million dollars in Vancouver-area real estate from a Lower Mainland gangster charged in the United States with facilitating an India-based transnational narcotics syndicate.
Banned Satluj Film Finds Defiant Audiences in Surrey
A film the Indian government has moved to suppress is finding determined audiences in British Columbia. Satluj, starring internationally acclaimed Punjabi-Canadian entertainer Diljit Dosanjh, is based on the life of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a Sikh human rights activist from Punjab who in the 1990s documented and made public the enforced disappearances of thousands of Sikh youth. Khalra compiled evidence that Punjab Police had secretly cremated thousands of unidentified bodies, suppressing proof of extrajudicial killings. He was abducted in 1995, allegedly by police officers who were later convicted of his murder. The film was blocked from release in India and was also pulled from a streaming service just two days after becoming available online — a move that sparked widespread concern about censorship and political pressure on content platforms. In Canada, where a large and politically engaged Sikh diaspora maintains deep ties to Punjab's history and unresolved human rights questions, community interest in Satluj has been intense and immediate. Organizations in Surrey arranged weekend screenings of the film beginning July 18, with additional events planned in cities across Canada. Attendees described the screenings as acts of both cultural solidarity and civic conscience — honoring Khalra's legacy and ensuring his story remains visible even as official channels in India work to erase it from public view. [1]
BC Invokes US Racketeering Law to Seize $11 Million in Property
British Columbia's civil forfeiture director filed a landmark claim in BC Supreme Court on July 8, seeking to seize more than eleven million dollars in Vancouver-area real estate from Garinder Singh Deo, a longtime Lower Mainland gangster charged in the United States with facilitating an India-based transnational crime organization. According to investigative reporting by Sam Cooper in The Bureau, the province's case is built on years of suspicious transaction reports filed with Fintrac by Canadian banks, alongside a parallel RCMP investigation that tracked Deo's activities in concert with the FBI's Operation Hard Ball. Deo is alleged in U.S. indictments to have aided the Bhagwanpuria gang — an India-based criminal syndicate with links to the Wolfpack crime network — by purchasing bulk quantities of cocaine and heroin in Southern California destined for distribution in the eastern United States. He was arrested in France on July 7, the day after Los Angeles authorities announced the charges, and remains in custody there awaiting extradition. The BC forfeiture claim employs an unusual and legally significant approach: it explicitly invokes the United States Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the Hobbs Act, and the U.S. Controlled Substances Act as the basis for a Canadian civil asset seizure — a rare cross-border legal mechanism that signals the province's willingness to reach beyond domestic law. [2]
Sources: [1] CBC · [2] The Bureau | Sam Cooper