India-born Balwinder Singh lived in the United States (mostly in San Francisco and later in Reno, Nev.) for more than 15 years after he applied for asylum in 1997 – and received it – using a false name and date of birth to defeat the pre-9/11-era security vetting procedures.
But he also apparently defeated security vetting on a lawful permanent resident (LPR) green card application in 2010, when he should not have, many years after the 9/11 reforms that were supposed to have detected those two key frauds. Proper vetting might well then have uncovered that he actually was a leader in the India-based Sikh separatist terrorist group Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), which is on the U.S.-designated terrorist exclusion list. He also was a leader in the militant Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF), designated by the European Union and India as a banned terrorist organization.
In about 2010, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted Singh an LPR green card on the basis of the same false name and date of birth Singh first provided in 1997 on his asylum application. So, too, did Singh successfully omit that, for all of the time he lived in the United States until that time, he was far more than merely a leader or affiliate member.
Four years before his LPR security screening, in 2006, Indian authorities had charged Singh in absentia for his involvement in the bombing of a bus that killed three people. Fingerprint checks with Indian authorities during the LPR screening might have found the connection.
Instead, from the continued anonymity of his San Francisco and Reno life under a false identity, he was able to actively fund, support, lead, and plot BKI and KZF terror attacks inside India for many years, according to 2013 terrorism case court documents.
BKI and the KZF had long used kidnapping, assassination, and bombings in the quest for a separate Sikh nation state in the Punjab region of India. According to the 2013 U.S. terrorism indictment, Singh came to the United States in 1997 for the express purpose of supporting the kidnapping, murder, and maiming of perceived enemies in his home country from the safety of anonymity provided by the American immigration records he secured. By 2012, BKI’s Pakistan-based leader anointed Singh leader of the United States branch of BKI, such was his commitment to the cause recognized, a federal indictment stated.
The consequence of the American failure to detect his identity fraud in 1997 and especially again in 2010 was that Singh was free to operate inside the United States on behalf of these groups and their causes, while evading arrest or detection in India. Indeed, Singh often used his American travel authorization documents to travel back and forth from India clandestinely to help plot and organize attacks with militants there, according to court records from a 2013 federal terrorism prosecution.
Far too late, an FBI investigation uncovered a plot by Singh and co-conspirators to financially support and provide weapons for violent terrorist attacks in his native country, according to a 2013 indictment. Singh did not merely help others do the killing; at one point, he arranged for the militants to provide a weapon and ammunition to him so that he could personally assassinate a certain “turncoat” during a trip to India, court records allege.
The Department of Justice eventually charged Singh for funding and preparing for an attack in India between September 2013 and December 17, 2013, along with other U.S.-based Sikh co-conspirators. Singh used his telephone to regularly communicate with militant followers in India, using code words to connote weapons, ammunition, and explosives. He sent money to the terrorist operatives and also personally traveled to India and Pakistan to plot attacks with them.
More specifically, in October 2013, Singh and his co-conspirators decided that one of them would travel to India to assassinate an Indian government official. Eventually, one of the co-conspirators attempted to board a flight to Thailand for this purpose but was arrested first. This individual was carrying two sets of night vision goggles that Singh had purchased for him at a Reno hunting store.
The FBI arrested Singh on December 18, 2013, and charged him with conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country, one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, one count of making a false statement on an immigration document, two counts of use of an immigration document procured by fraud, and one count of unlawful production of an identification document.
On November 29, 2016, Singh pleaded guilty. A judge sentenced him to 180 months in prison.