The situation between the two countries is becoming more and more tense. On Monday, Ottawa then New Dheli one after the other expelled their ambassador and other high-ranking diplomats. Previously, the Canadian federal police had reported “the involvement of agents of the Government of India in serious criminal activities in Canada”.
Enough to make Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lose his cool. “I believe that India made a monumental error in choosing to use its diplomats and organized crime to attack Canadians,” he said Monday. “We will never tolerate a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil,” added the head of government. He is referring here to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in June 2023 near Vancouver, at the origin of the diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
A Sikh separatist
This man, who arrived in Canada as a refugee in 1997 when he was 20 years old and naturalized in 2015, was born in 1977 in the Indian state of Punjab. Like nearly 60% of the population of this region of the world, he was Sikh (named after the religion founded in this state in the 15th century). Growing up in a context of violent insurgency for the creation of “Khalistan” – a Sikh homeland independent of India – he himself became a separatist.
Upon his arrival in Canada, he founded a plumbing company and took charge of the Sikh temple in Surrey (near Vancouver). He also married and had two children. When he was killed, Nijjar was preparing to organize a referendum for Sikhs who had emigrated to Canada to demonstrate their support for “Khalistan”. On the day of his murder, he had just given a speech in his temple to encourage his community to participate in this vote.
But in India, his native country, the man was accused of “terrorism”. He was notably suspected of being the mastermind of the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), a banned militant group, and wanted for an explosion that left six people dead and 42 injured in the town of Ludhiana in Punjab in 2007, according to the India Today newspaper. Unfounded accusations, according to the World Sikh Organization of Canada, a non-profit organization which claims to defend the interests of Canadian Sikhs. Hardeep Singh Nijjar has always contested the suspicions of terrorism leveled against him by the Indian authorities.
As the BBC recalls, he even wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister in 2016, when accusations began to be mentioned in the Indian press, to say that he was indeed a Sikh independence activist, but that he was not was not a supporter of violent actions.
Activities that disturbed India
It would seem that India – which has often complained to foreign governments about the activities of Sikh militants whom it accuses of wanting to rekindle the insurgency in Punjab – was ready to do anything to find him and put an end to his activities. The Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) – the Indian secret service – had offered a reward of one million rupees ($12,000) for information leading to his arrest. In 2018, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Punjab, where the state’s chief minister demanded action against Nijjar and eight other Sikh separatist leaders.
In June 2023, Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead by two masked men in the parking lot of the Sikh temple he ran in Surrey, near Vancouver, in western Canada. The World Sikh Organization of Canada denounced a “targeted assassination” and affirmed that the Canadian secret services had warned Hardeep Singh Nijjar of threats against him. Justin Trudeau considered the allegations linking the Indian secret services to this crime “credible”.
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