Canada arrests three Indians over killing of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar

OTTAWA (KMS) - Canadian police have arrested and charged three Indian men with the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year and said they are probing whether the men had ties to the Indian government.

According to the Kashmir Media Service, the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar plunged Canada and India into a serious diplomatic crisis last fall after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested Indian government involvement in the homicide.

Nijjar advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, carved out of India. On June 18, 2023, he was shot dead by masked assailants in the parking lot of the Sikh temple he led in suburban Vancouver. Trudeau announced several months later that Canada had credible allegations linking Indian intelligence to the killing and expelled an Indian official, spurring the diplomatic tit-for-tat with New Delhi.

Three Indian nationals, two aged 22 and one aged 28, were arrested Friday and charged with first degree murder and conspiracy charges. They are accused of being the shooter, driver and lookout on the day Nijjar was killed.

They were arrested by police in Edmonton, in the neighboring province of Alberta, where they reside, and are being held pending further proceedings.

All had been in Canada for between three and five years, police said at a news conference. “This investigation does not end here. We are aware that others may have played a role in this homicide,” said Mandeep Mooker of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s homicide investigations team.

“It is a bit of a sigh of relief that the investigation is moving forward,” Moninder Singh, a close friend of Nijjar, said in a media interview. “It is ultimately India who is responsible and hiring individuals to assassinate Sikh leaders in foreign countries,” said Singh, spokesperson for the British Columbia Council of Gurdwaras.

In November, the US Justice Department charged an Indian citizen living in the Czech Republic with plotting a similar assassination attempt on American soil. Prosecutors said in unsealed court documents that an Indian government official was also involved in the planning.

US intelligence agencies have assessed that the plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil was approved by India’s top spy official at the time, Samant Goel, The Washington Post reported this week.