Arrest of 3 Indian nationals in Canada thickens the Nijjar plot and deepens diplomatic mistrust

Serious charges against the trio

They have been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in relation to the homicide. Under section 231 (1) of Canada’s criminal code, they face a minimum sentence of 25 years, if they are convicted. However, the allegations against them have to be proven in court.

All three are believed to be affiliated with the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, which appears to have an extensive network in Canada and has been linked to instances of drive-by shootings and extortion in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Edmonton and the Greater Toronto Area or GTA. Among his principal lieutenants in North America is Satinderjeet Singh, better known as gangster Goldy Brar, who is wanted in connection with the murder of entertainer and politician Sidhu Moose Wala in May 2022. Brar, who was featured on Canada’s Top 20 Most Wanted fugitives list last year, is believed to have been residing in Brampton in the GTA before shifting to Northern California.

Nijjar’s murder and investigation

Nijjar’s murder in the parking lot of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara Sahib, where he was president at the time of his death, ruptured relations between India and Canada, including scuttling advanced negotiations towards an Early Progress Trade Agreement or EPTA, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statement in the House of Commons three months after the incident that there were credible allegations of a potential link between Indian agents and the homicide.

That connection has not yet been established by the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team or IHIT, tasked with the probe. But as Trudeau and investigators have said, that effort is “ongoing” along with attempts to track down at least three others who may have been involved in the killing.

When news first broke on the late evening of June 18, 2023, that officers from the Surrey detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP "found an adult male inside a vehicle suffering from apparent gunshot wounds", after receiving information that regard at approximately 8.27 pm, it would have been difficult to predict the incident’s diplomatic repercussions.

The diplomatic fallout

But Nijjar was a contentious figure, often the topic of conversations between India and Canada, as New Delhi had designated him a terrorist on July 1, 2020, as the Canada-based chief of Khalistan Tiger Force. He was wanted on charges of terrorism in India, including for conspiracy to murder a priest Kamaldeep Sharma in Jalandhar in January 2021.

When officials from the National Investigation Agency or NIA met their Canadian counterparts in New Delhi and Ottawa in 2021 and 2022, he was a major point of conversation for the former. Indian officials often expressed frustration at the lack of Canadian action, while the latter said they could not proceed as the information provided did not meet the evidentiary threshold of the country’s justice system.

None of the charges against him were ever tested in a Canadian court, though he was placed on an American no-fly list. He was briefly detained in April 2018 by Canadian law enforcement but released without any charges. At that time, he said he was “targeted and framed in false criminal cases by Indian authorities.” While he had been working as a plumber, in 2019, he became president of the Surrey Gurdwara.

Nijjar was also the principal organiser of the so-called Khalistan Referendum in British Columbia for the secessionist group Sikhs for Justice. He arrived in Canada in 1997 using a forged passport but his refugee claim was denied the next year. However, he remained in Canada and started propagating the separatist cause. An Interpol Red Notice was issued for him in 2014 and 2016 at India’s request but he had somehow become a Canadian citizen in 2007. That was apparently due to lobbying by an Indo-Canadian MP though that can’t be confirmed.

Nijjar’s murder and US intelligence

But events across Canada’s southern border have underscored the serious nature of the allegations over Nijjar’s murder. Last year, an indictment in a Federal court in New York was unsealed revealing an unsuccessful plot to kill Nijjar’s close friend and SFJ’s general counsel Gurpatwant Pannun.

The American documents pointed to an Indian official allegedly directing gangster Nik Gupta to facilitate Pannun’s killing but that plan went awry as the person he contacted was an undercover American operative. But Nijjar’s killing was specifically mentioned in the American indictment giving substance to Trudeau’s allegation against India, which New Delhi had described as “absurd” and “motivated.”

Matters could get further complicated in Canada as a recent Washington Post report alleged the involvement of India’s Consulate General in Vancouver in targeting Nijjar. No evidence has been provided but SFJ, which has seen itself gaining increasing influence in Canadian affairs, and other pro-separatist elements in Canada, have amplified that charge. India’s diplomats will remain under pressure as they have been since last summer when SFJ started its Wanted campaign against them.

Indian officials have stressed that relations with Ottawa are unlikely to improve till Trudeau remains in office, which is at least till October next year when Federal elections are scheduled. A change in Government in New Delhi, they said, will make little difference to India’s posture, which was articulated by external affairs minister S Jaishankar, who described Canada as the “biggest problem” while speaking at an event in Bhubaneshwar on Saturday, adding that Canadian leaders had given “these kinds of extremism, separatism, advocates of violence a certain legitimacy, in the name of free speech.”

That was proven again on Sunday, as pro-Khalistan elements paraded a float in Malton in the Greater Toronto Area or GTA showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi chained in a cage for Nijjar’s murder, amid separatist chants, like those that greeted Trudeau when we spoke at a Khalsa Day event in Toronto the previous Sunday.

It remains to be seen if India’s Prime Minister receives an invitation to attend the G7 heads of government summit, which Canada will host in the fall of 2025. As a former Indian diplomat to Ottawa said, “We may not have seen the worst yet.”