Months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of plotting an assassination on Canadian soil – plunging diplomatic relations between the two countries to their lowest level ever – the first arrests in the murder, which came on Friday, have done little to demystify the basis of the murder. of his claim.
Police offered no clues or presented any evidence that India had orchestrated the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh nationalist leader who was shot dead at the temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia, in June. What they said was that three Indian men had committed the murder and that an investigation into India’s role was underway.
Before the arrests, Indian officials had argued that Canada was trying to drag New Delhi into what it essentially described as a gang rivalry whose members had long been wanted for crimes in India.
After the arrests, a report from CBC, Canada’s public broadcasteraccording to anonymous sources, they also claimed that the suspects belonged to an Indian criminal gang.
But analysts and former officials said the possible role of a gang in the killing does not necessarily mean the Indian government was not involved in the crime.
India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has long been suspected of tapping into criminal networks to carry out operations in its immediate vicinity in South Asia, while maintaining deniability.
Canada’s accusation, if proven, that India orchestrated Nijjar’s murder – and a similar accusation made soon after by the United States in a different case – could suggest that RAW is now extending its collaborative program with criminals to carry out operations in Western countries, analysts said.
U.S. officials have produced compelling evidence in their indictment that an Indian government agent participated in a foiled attempt to assassinate a dual American-Canadian citizen. And Canada and allied officials have argued that Canada has evidence to support Trudeau’s claim that Indian agents carried out Nijjar’s murder.
But Canada’s failure to disclose any evidence of India’s participation, nine months after Trudeau’s explosive allegations, leaves Nijjar’s killing in the realm of allegations and counter-allegations in what is a highly tense political environment in both countries. analysts said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has flexed his muscles as a nationalist strongman, casting himself during his ongoing campaign for a third term as India’s protector and going so far as to target security threats.
During his speeches he boasted of how his government eliminates enemies by “coming down to their homes.” Although he made these references in relation to the country’s arch-enemy, Pakistan, right-wing social media accounts celebrated Nijjar’s killing in Canada as a similar reach of Modi’s long arm.
Trudeau, on the other hand, had faced criticism of weakness in the face of Chinese election interference activities on Canadian soil, and his bringing forward Nijjar’s murder was seen as compensation.
Canadian police announced Friday that they arrested the three Indian men in Edmonton, Alberta, the same day and charged them with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in Mr. Nijjar’s killing. The suspects had lived in Canada for three to five years but were not permanent residents of Canada, police said.
The gang that CBC reported the hitmen to whom they are linked are led by Lawrence Bishnoi, 31, accused of several cases of murder, extortion and drug trafficking. He orchestrated much of it from an Indian prison, where he has been held since 2014. Its members are seen as responsible for the murder of a popular Punjabi rapper and threats of attacks on Bollywood celebrities.
Indian security officials have frequently arrested Bishnoi-linked criminals, often on charges that the gang’s network stretched into Canada and overlapped with one promoting from Canadian soil the cause of Khalistan, a once deeply violent separatist movement with the goal of carving out the Indian state of Punjab as an independent nation.
Canada has a large Sikh diaspora, many of whom emigrated there after a violent and often indiscriminate crackdown by the Indian government in the 1980s against the movement for an independent Khalistan. While the cause has largely faded in India, it continues to have supporters in some segments of the diaspora. The Indian government has accused Canada, and several other Western countries, of not doing enough to crack down on the separatists.
Analysts and former security officials said that in India’s immediate geographic vicinity, RAW was often willing to venture into dark spaces to recruit assassins. Senior officials in the Modi administration, including Ajit Doval, the legendary former spy chief who now serves as his longtime national security adviser, have been accused in the past of penetrating the underworld to find hitmen willing to strike objectives both within the country and abroad.
Mr. Bishnoi has demonstrated enormous power behind bars, even giving a television interview from prison last year to portray himself as a nationalist warrior rather than a criminal mastermind. This, a former security official said, was a sign of his attempt to align himself with the nationalist spirit for a potential deal.
“I’m a nationalist,” Mr. Bishnoi said in that interview. “I am against Khalistan. I am against Pakistan.”
Ajai Sahni, a security analyst who runs the South Asia Terrorism Portal in New Delhi, said the exploitation of criminal gangs by spy agencies to carry out deniable operations is something that “happens all over the world”.
“It is certainly possible for agencies like RAW to exploit gang rivalries instead of unmasking their own covert operators,” Sahni added. “But just because this is generally the way one would expect it to be done, doesn’t necessarily mean we know that’s exactly the case in the Nijjar murder.”
The failed plot on American soil had some of the hallmarks of an agency trying to extend an old playbook into a different, unfamiliar space.
A November US indictment presented evidence including electronic communications and cash transactions between the hired hitman – who turned out to be an undercover cop – a boastful middleman, and a Indian intelligence handler whom the Washington Post recently identified as Vikram Yadav.
The Indian government’s response suggests concern: India’s top government diplomat said the action was not politics, while the government announced an investigation into the matter and promised cooperation with the United States.
The case of Canada played out very differently. The country has not publicly revealed any evidence to support Trudeau’s claims, although allied officials said in September that Canadian officials had found a “smoking gun”: intercepted communications from Indian diplomats in Canada indicating involvement in the plot.
Indian officials dismissed Trudeau’s claims with the kind of aggression that suggested he wasn’t involved or was confident in his deniability.
The Indian government expelled Canadian diplomats and doubled down on its efforts by publishing a list of individuals on Canadian soil who it said had long been wanted as part of what it described as a crime-terrorism nexus.
Last week, officials from Modi’s government spoke to the scenes of an event Trudeau attended to say it showed his accusations were simply aimed at appeasing what they say is a Sikh vote bank for him. They pointed to videos of an event where Mr. Trudeau was the chief guest and where chants of “long live Khalistan” were shouted. Mr. Trudeau, in his speech, said he will always be there “to protect your rights and your freedoms, and we will always defend your community from hate.”
After the speech, India’s foreign ministry summoned Canada’s second-highest-ranking diplomat to New Delhi to file a complaint.
“His remarks illustrate once again the kind of political space that has been given in Canada to separatism, extremism and people who engage in violence,” Randhir Jaiswal, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a news conference.
