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Canadian police charge three Indian nationals with murder of Sikh separatist
The News
Canadian police arrested and charged three members of an alleged hit squad they believe was ordered by Indian authorities to kill the prominent Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced on Friday.
“Following many months of investigative work ... three suspects have been arrested and charged for their alleged involvement in the killing of Mr. Nijjar,” said Assistant Commissioner David Teboul at a press briefing.
The three suspects were young Indian nationals living in Canada, he said. Teboul said the investigation is ongoing and includes “investigating connections to the Government of India.”
Nijjar was fatally shot by masked gunmen in a Vancouver suburb in June 2023 in an incident that sparked international controversy and led to a souring of diplomatic relations between Canada and India.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in September said authorities were investigating Indian government agents’ links to the killing, allegations New Delhi dismissed as “absurd.”
It comes after US authorities last year foiled a planned assassination of a Sikh separatist on American soil that Western officials believe was linked to India’s spy agency, The Washington Post reported.
CBC News first reported on the arrests.
SIGNALS
Plot to kill on US soil shows India’s rising confidence as a global power
The foiled assassination of a New York-based Sikh activist that India’s spy agency reportedly signed off on, and that members of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inner circle were allegedly aware of, according to a Washington Post investigation, “reflects a profound shift in geopolitics.” Despite the brazenness of the act, the US cannot risk alienating the emerging global power given that Washington needs a buffer against China’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, the Post wrote. India risked attempting an assassination on US soil — and during Modi’s state visit to the White House — “because they knew they could get away with it,” a Western security official told the newspaper.
Indian government plays up threat of Sikh separatists abroad
Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to be willing to jeopardize his relations with powerful allies like the US over Sikh separatism, despite the cause no longer being a legitimate security threat in India, Hartosh Singh Bal wrote in Foreign Affairs. The reason, he argued, is that Sikhs are standing in the way of Modi’s ideological project of creating a Hindu nation where religious minorities like Muslims and Christians are not equal citizens. Hindu nationalists who regard Sikhism as a branch of Hinduism expect support from Sikhs in this endeavor. But “when Sikhs protest Modi’s policies, the Indian government cannot simply dismiss the demonstrators as foreign agents, as it does with Muslims,” Bal wrote. “It has to listen.”
Modi turns to taunts that Trudeau ‘shouldn’t ignore’
Modi is capitalizing on allegations of extrajudicial acts to project a strongman image as he seeks reelection in India’s ongoing election. “Today, even India’s enemies know: This is Modi, this is the New India,” he said at a recent rally. “This New India comes into your home to kill you.” The remarks are “intended at least in part to taunt [Canadian] Prime Minister Justin Trudeau” who accused Modi’s government of being involved in the 2023 killing of a Sikh separatist in British Columbia, wrote Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders. Trudeau should ignore suggestions to tolerate New Delhi’s extrajudicial acts under the guise of protecting economic and trade ties with India, Saunders argued, because Modi is “attacking Canada’s fundamental values of freedom of speech, pluralism and physical security.”
