New Delhi: The interrogation of a staffer of charity organisation Khalsa Aid International (‘Khalsa Aid”) by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with activities of banned extremist group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) and the subsequent nomination of the organisation for Nobel Peace Prize has puzzled and mystified the country.
However, security agencies believe that the organisation acts as a front of the proscribed outfit Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and helps it in financing terror. A case registered by the NIA in August 2012 claimed the same.
Though Khalsa Aid International and its CEO Ravinder Singh also known as Ravi Singh have been openly supporting Khalistani extremism, official documents of Khalsa Aid represent an interesting picture. The documents accessed by Zee News from the Charity Commission of the UK government indicate that Ravinder Singh has been deceiving the donors of Khalsa Aid. It shows underutilisation, maneuvering, and tricking of funds received by the organisation pointing at brazen corruption.
The documents show that for the fiscal year 2018-19, Khalsa Aid raised £3,901,362 as funds. However, during the same year, it only spent £1,384,104 nearly one third of its total income.
The documents of previous years also show a huge difference between receipts and expenditure. A couple of insiders and members of the Sikh community talk about two possibilities or channels of expenditure of these funds. Firstly, numerous Sikh philanthropists have kept on highlighting that Ravinder Singh misappropriated funds donated to Khalsa Aid to maintain his lavish and royal lifestyle. And secondly, they expressed that there is a great probability of Khalsa Aid working as a funding organisation for the BKI.
Zee News also visited the website of Khalsa Aid (khalsaaid.org), but could not locate any balance sheet, audit reports, financial statements — anything which could lead to accountability or transparency. Auditors have highlighted that in countries like New Zealand and Australia — where it is unregistered, Khalsa Aid has gobbled thousands of dollars of funders without utilising it for charity purposes.
The company documents at the UK government’s Company House’s website highlights that initially Ravinder Singh registered Khalsa Aid as a ‘Limited’ company, and wanted to make profits by business of charity. After operating unregistered for years, he registered the company ‘Khalsa Aid Limited’, a ‘private company limited by guarantee without share capital’, on March 8, 2008.
However, failing to make profits for years, he dissolved the company on November 27, 2011. Before closing his shop, Ravinder Singh set up a new one. On May 31, 2011, he set up another company by the name of ‘Khalsa Aid’, which was a ‘Private Limited Company by guarantee without share capital use of ‘Limited’ exemption’.
Nevertheless, this again could not turn Ravinder Singh’s fortunes and he had to shut it down on January 8, 2013. Continuing his attempts to make money through the hit and trial method, he ended up registering his organisation as a charitable organisation by the name of ‘Khalsa Aid International’ on August 25, 2015.
Hence, by mixing up data and manipulating facts, Khalsa Aid shows itself as a ‘charitable organisation’ that is over two decades old, without mentioning that it operated as a for-profit organisation for more almost one and a half decade. A wordsmith and a wizard of jugglery, Ravinder Singh has been interchangeably using the organisations ‘Khalsa Aid’ – a company meant for profit and ‘Khalsa Aid International’ — a charitable organisation.
Ajmer Singh Randhawa, a former office bearer of Khalsa Aid, has been highlighting the scam being carried out by Ravinder Singh under the guise of his charity organisation. He also mentioned that he has acted as a barrier for other Sikh charity organisations and have been sabotaging their fund-raising campaigns through propaganda.
Randhawa, who calls himself a ‘blogger’, wrote, “Ravi Singh had called all other Sikh individuals and organizations working in charity and working in the field of service to panth UNTRUSTWORTHY… When I read his comment, I objected to it and asked him the reason, calling himself as only a servant of Khalsa nation but others as untrustworthy, instead of giving a suitable answer to my query, he made it a war of words. Many other ignorant blind followers of him too joined it and started attacking me on facebook, trying to defame me. Few who knew his reality of living lavishly on Sangat’s money joined me and helped to raise this voice against his false propaganda.”
Adding his voice to those exposing the fraudulent activities of Ravinder Singh through Khalsa Aid, a member of the Sikh community, on a discussion over an online forum dedicated to Sikhism, shared the pie-chart on difference between the income and expenditure of Khalsa Aid and commented — “What are your thoughts? Something doesn’t add up.. either our community is numb oblivious or doesn’t care.”
His statements and activities of lobbying within the Sikh community and marginalising other Sikh charity organisations highlight that he aspires to become the undebated champion by receiving almost all the funding coming in from Sikh donors and philanthropists. He considers another Sikh group ‘United Sikhs’, which runs a similar charity organisation ‘Sikh Aid’, as his opponent and in a long article authored over a Sikh portal in 2006, termed them “another organization mushroomed for monetary gain’.
A lot of insiders of Khalsa Aid have alleged that Ravinder Singh and his wife run a huge syndicate for extorting money and spreading propaganda related to Khalsa Aid. Ajmer Singh Randhawa has highlighted that wife of Ravinder Singh heads the extortion network and maintains and heads the team of trolls for attacking all those individuals who call out ongoing corrupt practices in Khalsa Aid and try to create an image of the outfit as a ‘Messiah’ of the poor and destitute.
Sharing his ordeal, Randhawa said, “Wife of Ravi Singh approached me on Facebook and wished to provide services of Khalsa Aid to victims of 1984 in Delhi. I thanked her but on the contrary I asked her if the mission of Khalsa aid to help SIKH DHARMI FAUZIS AND MARTYRS FAMILIES are over and then suggested her to keep them focused in Punjab only and let the others provide their services in their respective fields and areas like sewa84 is working in widow colony of Delhi.”
The propaganda team led by his wife has been ever growing since it began its operations. Besides countering the discontent amongst the donors and campaigns exposing corruption within Khalsa Aid, the propaganda team led by her also attacks specific targets in attempts to incapacitate the opponents. One of the very recent targets of the team was New Zealand based Harnek Singh, a YouTuber and a part-time RJ.
Harnek Singh has been exposing the fraud and fudging by Ravinder Singh and his outfit for the past sometimes. The YouTuber has been terming him as a ‘fraud’, who makes money by exploiting the emotions and sentiments of wealthy Sikhs. He also argued that “for every Rs 10 Khalsa Aid donates in social service, it pockets Rs 90 to support its rich and luxurious style of function.”
Given his popularity, Harnek Singh was believed to inflict serious damages to Ravinder Singh’s outfit as he is a popular social media influencer with 3,98,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and is also a familiar Sikh voice on radio in New Zealand. To counter Harnek Singh and maintain the income of Khalsa Aid, Ravinder Singh’s wife moved a petition, through one of her followers, to New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and CEO of YouTube to shut down his: YouTube channel and Radio Virsa. The petition titled “Terminate the Anti Sikh Youtube Channel and Radio Virsa NZ of Harnek Singh New Zealand’ also termed him an “Anti-Sikh Person”, besides calling him a hate-monger.
Recently, Harnek Singh was brutally attacked in December 2020, near his residence in Auckland. Reportedly, he was attacked for supporting the three farmers’ bills passed by the Indian government and opposing the Farmers’ Protest. However, a couple of new members of the Indian community in New Zealand have argued that the possibility of involvement of Ravinder Singh behind the attack cannot be ruled out. Harnek Singh had to face a similar attack earlier last year as well.
In lines of the same, she also propped-up a similar petition through one of her supporters four years ago. The petition titled “Khalsa Aid Ceo Ravi Singh for Nobel Peace prize”, pushed over Change.org is considered as the initiation of the campaign to build a momentum to project him as a philanthropist and help him fetch more funds. Now the team has furthered the same campaign through Canadian lawmaker Tim Uppal to nominate Khalsa Aid for Nobel Peace Prize, just a day after it was named in the NIA chargesheet for involvement in terror activities.
Regarding the impact of social media campaigns by the propaganda team of Ravinder Singh and the aura created by it, a supporter of Khalsa Aid expressed on a blogging site — “I was very much impressed by his work based on Twitter feeds, but after this post I visited his site khalsaaid.org. It has no balance sheet, audit reports etc to show any transparency. He seems to be a fairly rich guy with no income source except for aid money.. It’s disgraceful to live off money meant for needy people… People should demand answers or stop donating.”
These revelations and similar exposes have increasingly started coming to light. Transparency groups believe that such exposures would soon lead to investigation by economic crime investigation agencies in the UK and across the world. However, they also argue that a greater number of whistleblowers from within the Sikh community should start calling out the financial irregularities of Khalsa Aid International, as every money donated to the organisation is based on the faith of donors on Sikhism and misappropriation of every single penny would amount to an act of denting that image.
