Canada police investigate video warning Sikhs not to fly Air India

“We take every threat seriously, especially when it concerns airlines,” Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez told reporters in Ottawa.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he added, “is doing an investigation.”

The videos, posted online in the last week, feature Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the general counsel for the US-based Sikhs for Justice, which advocates the creation of a separate Sikh state carved out of India.

He warns Sikhs in the video: “Don’t fly Air India after November 19, your lives may be in danger.”

He told Canadian media this was not a threat, but rather a call to boycott Indian businesses.

‘Watch your back’: Sikh diaspora fears for safety after killing of separatist

The Sikh separatist movement is largely finished within India, where security forces used deadly force to put down an insurgency in the state of Punjab in the 1980s.

Canada is home to some 770,000 Sikhs, who make up about two per cent of the overall population, with a vocal minority calling for creating a separate Indian state called Khalistan.

India dismissed as “absurd” the bombshell accusation.

Relations between India and Canada have plunged over the unsolved slaying, and Indian unhappiness over how Ottawa has handled Sikh separatists.