The recent arrest of three members of a hit squad in Canada trended because they were charged with the murder of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023. Nijjar had a Canadian passport. The global interest was on whether the trio was tied to the Indian security establishment. The news break came days after the Washington Post claimed to have outed an R&AW operative as the handler of a botched attempt to bump off another Khalistani radical in the US, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
However, the Canadian police gave little away, merely claiming a larger ring was under the scanner and they were looking into their Indian establishment linkage. They refused to share the nature of the evidence and motive. What’s known at present is the three people under arrest are Indian nationals who lived in Edmonton for three to five years. They are speculated to have entered Canada on student visas. The trio played different roles as shooters, drivers and spotters on the day Nijjar was killed. Canada is yet to share any information with India, foreign minister S Jaishankar said.
Bilateral relations hit an all-time low after Canadian PM Justin Trudeau flagged the Nijjar case in his talks with PM Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi without sharing an iota of evidence. Jaishankar accused Trudeau of doing vote bank politics by giving political legitimacy to Khalistani elements because his party is in a minority. He went on to rub it in, adding Canada deserved a strong leader like Modi.
An interim report of an independent investigation released in Canada accused India of ‘not differentiating between lawful pro-Khalistani political advocacy and the relatively small Canada-based Khalistani violent extremism’. “It views anyone aligned with Khalistani separatism as a seditious threat,” the report said.
Apparently, the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight with 329 passengers, mostly Canadian Sikhs, by Khalistani radicals is not even a blip in its national memory. Had Canada acted upon the violent elements, like the Nijjars, chances are the mid-air terror attack could have been avoided. Besides, as many as 25 Indian requests for extradition of Khalistanis are yet to be acted upon. Canada’s intransigence re-emphasises the need for a universal definition on terror that is binding on all nations.