India-Canada Ties | Fallout of a transborder assassination

The latest Canadian government accusations that Indian agents were involved in the assassination of its citizen and Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar have evoked strange responses on all sides.

India’s official reaction, denying the charges, is predictable.

India had demanded that Canada produce evidence of its involvement. Apparently, such evidence was presented by a representative of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigating the case, at a secret meeting in Singapore on October 12 with India’s National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval.

However, according to The Washington Post, the Canadians were told that India “would deny any link to the Nijjar murder and any link to any other violence in Canada no matter what the evidence was”. The facile rejection of evidence (as opposed to intelligence reports presented to India earlier) that it had itself asked for was no surprise.

While the nature and quality of the evidence presented by the Canadians are not in the public domain, The Washington Post reports that officials claimed to have “outlined evidence that India had enlisted [Lawrence] Bishnoi’s gang networks in Canada to carry out the Nijjar killing and other attacks.”

It is unclear whether the Canadians also presented evidence about “conversations and texts among Indian diplomats” that include references to “a senior official in India and a senior official in RAW who authorised the intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists.” Then, the report drops a bombshell: “Canadian officials identified the senior official in India as Amit Shah, a member of Modi’s inner circle who serves as home affairs minister.”

Leaking official conversations with the Indian NSA by Canadian officials as well as details of evidence they had gathered, within 24 hours of the Singapore meeting is rather strange. Their naming of Shah is even stranger.

By its actions, Canada seems to have definitively shut the door on back-channel communication on the Nijjar issue. Up till now, they were talking to Indian officials in a bid to improve the relationship between the two countries. That attempt is now over.

The mainstream Indian media has been less than honest in its reportage. Throwing the basic tenets of fairness to the winds, most of the prime-time TV channels and legacy print media went hammer and tongs at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, painting him as a villain beyond redemption.

The media limited itself to amplifying the government’s response with most of the media virtually expunging reference to the home minister from their reportage, at least for the first 24 hours.

The link imputed between the notorious Lawrence Bishnoi gang and officials of the Government of India is serious. It also has implications for the future of politics in India as well.

The Bishnoi gang is accused of murders not only in Canada and Punjab but also most recently in the murder of Baba Siddique, Nationalist Congress Party leader in Mumbai.

Bishnoi is currently wanted in Punjab for the Sidhu Moose Wala murder but is housed in Sabarmati Jail in Ahmedabad. He was shifted from Tihar Jail in Delhi to Gujarat in August 2023 — barely two months after Nijjar was murdered in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, on June 18, 2023. He has also been arrested in a Rs 195-crore drugs seizure case linked to Pakistan.

In August 2023, the Union Home Ministry promulgated a unique order under Section 268 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which prohibited anyone taking Bishnoi from out of the Sabarmati Jail for questioning in other cases for one year.

This has now been extended, under Section 303 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) that replaced the CrPC in July, till August 2025. Bishnoi’s questioning in any criminal case (Moose Wala murder, shooting attempt at actor Salman Khan, and now the Siddique murder) can only take place inside Sabarmati Jail.

It would beggar belief that Bishnoi is operating his gang from jail with impunity, without some kind of official connivance. In the words of the NSA, as reported by The Washington Post, Bishnoi “was known to be up to no good from his jail cell”. Since prisons do not come under the police department but under the state home department, it is hard to explain why he has been allowed to thrive criminally.

A hypothetical question that needs an answer is: If the Canadian allegations are true, then might not those willing to flout international laws be equally cavalier about throwing domestic laws to the winds? If not answered clearly, it is bound to send a chill down the spine of the leaders of the Opposition in India.

However, it is equally inexplicable why Trudeau is hell-bent on pursuing the Nijjar case in public. Such misdemeanours, although serious especially when a friendly country is targeted, are normally not allowed to pull the bilateral relations to the rock-bottom.

India alleges that the fuss is for electoral reasons. Even if true, how is that an illegitimate act? Do politicians in India not boast in election campaigns about aggressive action by “new India” against terrorists on their home turf?

If the explanations for Trudeau’s upping the ante are somewhat inadequate, the reaction of the United States is truly inexplicable. It seems to be working in concert with Canada on the issue of transborder assassinations. The US state department spokesperson has backed Canada’s allegations and urged India to “cooperate”.

Speculations are that despite the unprecedented deepening of India-US relations there is a section of the US establishment unhappy with India’s stand on issues important to it — from the Ukraine war and the war in West Asia to confronting an aggressive China. Whenever the US does not want to muddy its feet, it has used other friendly countries to put pressure on its target nation. Recall how the Canadian police acted on a US warrant and arrested and jailed Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei while she was changing planes at the Vancouver International Airport.

Is Canada the cat’s paw for the US to put pressure on India? There is no easy answer to this uncomfortable question. Indeed, there are no clear answers to many of the questions raised by the disproportionate fallout of the Nijjar assassination.

 Bharat Bhushan is a Delhi-based journalist.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH).