Trudeau Says India Likely Behind Murder of Canadian Sikh Leader
Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s assassination has created a diplomatic crisis.
By Justin Ling
Foreign Policy
September 19, 2023
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ahead of the G-20 leaders' summit in New Delhi on Sept. 9.EVAN VUCCI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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The Canadian government says it has evidence that agents of the Indian government may have been responsible for the assassination of a Sikh leader on Canadian soil this summer.
The allegations were revealed publicly by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon. “Over the past number of weeks,” Trudeau told the House, “Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.”
If the allegations are true, it would be an incredibly rare example of a targeted assassination on notionally friendly soil—perhaps the most brazen since the killings carried outby Israel after the 1972 Olympic massacre.
India’s alleged role in the murder has created a major diplomatic crisis between Ottawa and New Delhi, and may have knock-on effects for India’s broader relations, further complicating things in the Indo-Pacific.
On June 18, Nijjar delivered a speech at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, where he was president, in Surrey, British Columbia. Afterward, he walked to the parking lot and climbed into his car. Shortly after 8 p.m., two men in masks approached Nijjar’s car and opened fire. The two men escaped in a waiting getaway car. While the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have yet to announce the identities of the suspected gunmen, the homicide team did identify their vehicle.
Trudeau said he presented the accusations directly to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “in no uncertain terms” when the two met in New Delhi during the Group of 20 summit last week. Ottawa has also raised the issue with Indian intelligence. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Trudeau said, demanding India’s full cooperation with the investigation.
On Monday, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly announced that Canada had expelled a “top Indian diplomat.” She later clarified that the expelled Indian official was the head of the Canada station of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s foreign intelligence agency. Ottawa named the official as Pavan Kumar Rai—the Indian high commission in Ottawa lists Rai as the minister responsible for “community affairs.”
In a public statementsent toForeign Policyupon a request for comment and attributed to High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma, the Indian government rejected the accusation. “Allegations of Government of India’s involvement in any act of violence in Canada are absurd and motivated,” it reads.
It goes on to accuse the Canadian government of trying to “shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and of doing too little to tackle “anti-India elements operating from their soil.” India later announced that it had expelleda senior Canadian diplomat.
Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre told the House of Commons that the allegations, if they are true, represent an “outrageous affront to Canada’s sovereignty.”
India has, for years, expressed its frustrations with the presence of an organized—and, in some cases, radical—Sikh separatist movement in Canada, centered around the idea of an independent “ Khalistan” in Punjab, the homeland of Sikhism.
Canada Blames India for Murder of Sikh Leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar (archive.ph) |
