How the Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada The authors define Soft Target as "an espionage term used for any country, institution or group of people very easy to penetrate and manipulate for subversive purposes" and argue that the Canadian Sikh community was a "Soft Target" of a covert operation by the Indian government during the 1980s. The Indian intelligence agencies not only penetrated the Sikh community in order to discredit them world wide and halt the momentum of the demand of an independent Sikhs state, but also manipulated the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).