We will probably never know the complete truth about the assassination of Khalistani extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Canada has accused India of involvement in the killing, while New Delhi has vehemently denied it.
Investigations are on, but no smoking gun, at least one pointing at India, has yet emerged. It is, of course, possible that Nijjar, who was wanted in India on several charges of terrorism, was killed by other Sikh extremists in a local faction fight.
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Canadian Parliament that its authorities were pursuing “credible allegations” of links connecting agents of the Indian government to the killing of Nijjar.
He did not provide any details and said he had taken his “deep concerns” to the Indian side and conveyed them personally to Prime Minister Modi at the G20 summit, saying that the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil was “an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty”.
He had also apparently shared the same with US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
In a statement on Tuesday, India rejected the allegations, saying that they were “absurd and motivated.”
It added, “We are a democratic polity with a strong commitment to the rule of law” and said that such “unsubstantiated allegations” were seeking to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists threatening India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, “who have been provided shelter in Canada.”
“The inaction of the Canadian government on this matter has been a long-standing and continuing concern,” India further states, adding that the “space given in Canada to a range of illegal activities including murders and human trafficking and organised crime is not new.”
Diplomatic relations between India and Canada
Diplomatic relations have already been gutted and will take time to recover. Depending on the kind of evidence that the Canadians come up with, there could be some collateral damage to India-US ties as well, given that Ottawa is America’s closest ally.
The US is walking a tightrope between a major NATO ally and its new strategic partner. The US and India have lately deepened their relations and are seeking to promote joint production of defence equipment including jet engines.
Biden has actively courted India in the recent past. Modi’s state visit to Washington in June was a major success and the American President’s friendliness to Modi was on full display in the recent G20 summit.
The White House issued a statement on Tuesday saying that it was “deeply concerned over the allegations referenced by Prime Minister Trudeau.” It called for the Canadian investigation to proceed and bring the perpetrators to justice, and at the same time it urged “the Indian government to cooperate in the Canadian investigation.”
Given its history, the US is likely to look the other way, even if evidence of an Indian hand is found. It is hardly a secret that countries like the US, Israel, and Russia carry out extra-judicial killings of their enemies in third countries.
Here, the issue will be the killing of a violent extremist in a democratic country, but New Delhi's case is that a democratic country has been consistently lax in dealing with terrorist threats to India.
As for the possible Indian involvement, the Canadians should have given some hard evidence before even raising the issue publicly.
So far, all we have is an allegation.
It is actually quite peculiar that the Canadian Prime Minister made such a serious charge against a friendly country without offering any supporting evidence.
Perhaps the Canadian investigation is ongoing, so it would have been appropriate for the inquiries to be completed before making the accusation.
It is also possible that the Trudeau government’s approach is occasioned by the fact that his government is propped up by the National Democratic Party led by the pro-Khalistan leader Jagmeet Singh.
The Many Times That Canada Has Failed India
We can be pardoned for asking for hard evidence because the Canadian record on investigating Khalistani terrorist crimes is not particularly good.
There are long memories in India of the hash that the Canadians made of the inquiry into the 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182 over the Irish sea, killing all 329 people aboard, most of them Canadian citizens of Indian origin.
Indeed, it transpired that despite hard evidence that a terrorist crime was to be committed, nothing was done.
Worse, after the event, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sought to cover up evidence of the crime, and after a trial that began only in 2000, one person named Inderjit Singh Reyat was convicted of manslaughter and served a few years in jail.
Two others, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted after the somewhat farcical trial. In July 2022, Malik was assassinated in Surrey, and two persons, neither of them of Indian origin, have been arrested for the crime, which may have been part of a factional fight among Sikh separatists.
The main perpetrator of the AI 182 tragedy, Canadian Sikh Talwinder Singh Parmar, who was very much in the sights of the RCMP, got away and was finally shot and killed in India in 1992, along with his Pakistani handler Intekhab Ahmed Zia and a Kashmiri associate.
Parmar was the founder of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and was wanted for killing two Punjab Police officers. Incidentally, in 1982, when India had sought the extradition of Parmar, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the current PM’s father, had refused.
Canada Only Has Itself to Blame
Nijjar was in no way innocent.
He was initially associated with the BKI and later founded his own Khalistan Tiger Force. He was wanted for several crimes in India including terrorist activities.
He fled the country in 1997 on a fake passport, got asylum in Canada, and became the head of the Guru Nanak Sigh Gurudwara in Surrey, an outskirt of Vancouver in Canada.
He was actively involved in anti-India activity and visited Pakistan in 2013-2014 to meet BKI leaders.
In 2018, his name was figured on a list of “most wanted” persons which was given to visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justine Trudeau by the then Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, and in 2020 he was designated a terrorist under Indian laws.
In recent years, an even deadlier mixture has emerged, with a number of gangsters operating in Punjab also using Canada as a base of sorts, and once there, getting involved in Khalistani activities.
On 18 September, a local Congress leader was shot dead in Moga district and a gangster in Canada, Arshdeep Singh Gill, took to Facebook to claim responsibility.
As many as seven notorious gangsters, including five classified in A-category, have found refuge in Canada. These people are charged with multiple cases of extortion, killings, and drug smuggling.
Among them is Goldy Brar wanted for the murder of singer Sidhu Moosewala, Sundeep Singh Sidhu wanted for the killing of Comrade Balvinder Singh, and Lakhbir Singh who used a grenade launcher to launch an attack on a police station in Mohali.
Many of these persons are known to the Canadian authorities, but yet they are able to run free and direct crimes in India.
In these circumstances, if a frustrated India has indeed been involved in the Nijjar killing, Canada has no one but itself to blame.
The Indian statement of Tuesday brings out the deep unhappiness of the country over the persistent and “long-standing” inaction to the activities in Canada of those threatening the sovereignty and integrity of India, which is, after all, a country that has suffered grievously from terrorism in the past.
The government in New Delhi has a duty to act, pre-emptively if necessary, to protect the country and its citizens from the actions of terrorists.
(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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