Canadian Sikh's Murder: How Long Will Modi Continue to Escape Accountability?

[Riaz Haq]

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused the Indian government of involvement in the murder of a Canadian Sikh leader on Canadian soil. Trudeau announced this week that Canada was "actively pursuing credible allegations" that Indian intelligence agents had potentially been involved in the murder of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June, 2023. Canada, a member of the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance with Australia, New Zealand, UK and the US, is reported to have shared intelligence on the incident with Washington.  The US and UK say they are "deeply concerned" and encourage Indian officials to cooperate in any investigation. There have been similar "mysterious" assassinations of Sikh leaders in Pakistan and the UK this year. Can the West afford to ignore these assassinations? Will Modi government be emboldened to continue its campaign of murder of more leaders of the significant Sikh diaspora in the West if the US fails to hold Modi to account now? 

Three Sikh Leaders Assassinated in 2023

Since the 2020-21 farmers' protests in Delhi, the Sikh diaspora has staged massive rallies at Indian diplomatic missions across western capitals. These rallies were followed by systematic, and near-simultaneous, killings of various Sikh leaders in Canada, Pakistan and UK. On May 6, 2023, Paramjit Singh Panwar was killed in Lahore, Pakistan. Avtar Singh Khanda was assassinated in Birmingham, England. on June 11. On June 18, Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. 

Reacting to the report of Trudeau's allegation against the Indian government, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Syrus Qazi said: “We are aware of the nature of our eastern neighbor, we know what they are capable of … so it is not a surprise for us. “We caught [one of their] serving naval intelligence officers on our soil. He (Kulbhushan Jadhav) is in our custody and admitted that he came here to create instability and spread evil,” he added. 

Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said her country remained a “target of a series of targeted killings and espionage by (Indian Intelligence Agency) RAW".  “In December last year, Pakistan released a comprehensive dossier providing concrete and irrefutable evidence of India’s involvement in the Lahore attack of June 2021. The attack was planned and executed by Indian intelligence,” she said, adding that in 2016, a high-ranking Indian military officer Kulbhushan Jadhav confessed to his involvement in directing, financing and executing terror and sabotage in Pakistan.

Narendra Modi has a long history of murdering minorities in his country. After the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002, Narendra Modi made the cover of India Today magazine with the caption "Hero of Hatred". Modi was denied a visa to visit the United States.  The US visa ban on Modi was lifted in 2014 after he became prime minister. Since then,  Narendra Modi's image has been rehabilitated by the West as the US and Western Europe seek allies in Asia to counter the rise of China.  However, Modi's actions on the ground in India confirm that he remains "Hero of Hatred" and "Divider In Chief" at his core.  A recent two-part BBC documentary explains this reality in significant detail. The first part focuses on the 2002 events in Gujarat when Modi as the state chief minister ordered the police to not stop the Hindu mobs murdering Muslims and burning their homes and businesses.  The second part looks at Modi government's anti-Muslim policies, including the revocation of Kashmir's autonomy (article 370) and a new citizenship law (CAA 2019) that discriminates against Muslims. It shows the violent response by security forces to peaceful protests against the new laws, and interviews the family members of people who were killed in the 2020 Delhi riots orchestrated by Modi's allies. 

Having been caught by Ottawa in the act of murdering one of its citizens, the Indian government has reacted angrily, calling the Canadian allegations "absurd". In fact, India has labeled victims of assassination campaign "terrorists".  The Indian response will only force Canada to publicly share evidence of wrongdoing by New Delhi. Such public disclosures will expose India's links to similar recent "mysterious" murders in Pakistan and the UK.  It will also force London and Washington to confront the issue because the UK and the US also have hundreds of thousands of Sikh citizens whose leaders will be vulnerable to potential assassinations by the Modi government. 

Here's Indian National Security Advisor on how to use Taliban to attack Pakistan:

https://youtu.be/eYRuk8H5M9E?si=ZB1c7Dd8ntQdKeFi

http://www.youtube.com/embed/eYRuk8H5M9E?si=kioJoC8X-6nHSzSV"; title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>" height="315" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" width="560" style="cursor: move; background-color: #b2b2b2;" /> 

 Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Karan Thapar Dismantles Official Indian Narrative on Kulbhushan Jadhav

Why is India Sponsoring Terror in Pakistan? 

Indian Agent Kubhushan Yadav's Confession

Has Modi Stepped Up India's Covert War in Pakistan?

Ex India Spy Documents Successful RAW Ops in Pakistan

London Police Document Confirms MQM-RAW Connection Testimony

India's Ex Spooks Blame Kulbhushan Jadhav For Getting Caught

Ajit Doval Lecture on "How to Tackle Pakistan" 

Mohan Lal Bhaskar: An Indian Raw Agent in Pakistan

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

 

PakAlumni Social Network

[Riaz Haq]

Ashok Swain:

Modi did everything to defeat Muizzu in the 2023 election in the Maldives by providing men & money but failed. Even RAW had a plan to remove President Muizzu after the election. The Washington Post reports Modi manipulating elections in foreign countries.


https://x.com/ashoswai/status/1873810065469432187?s=61&t=mgTxrm...

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A plot in paradise and India’s struggle for influence in Asia
Secret contacts between Indian agents and politicians in the Maldives over ousting its pro-China leader reflect the growing contest between Asia’s great powers.
By Gerry Shih and Siddharthya Roy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/30/maldives-president-...


In January, after Muizzu had won and taken office, an adviser to the Muizzu family said, a senior RAW intelligence officer at New Delhi’s embassy in Washington explored a plan to overthrow the president with two Indian intermediaries who had political and business contacts in the Maldives. One intermediary was Shirish Thorat, a former Indian police officer who has worked as a private military contractor and who advised Mohamed Nasheed when he was the Maldivian president on how to curb Islamist radicalization. The other was Savio Rodrigues, a publisher based in the Indian state of Goa who previously served as a spokesman for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Muizzu family adviser provided The Post with surveillance records of phone calls and meetings held by the RAW official and Thorat, who now lives near Washington, but did not explain how the records were obtained.
When contacted by The Post, Thorat and Rodrigues separately confirmed the existence of plans to remove Muizzu but declined to say whether they were working on the Indian government’s behalf. When asked about his meetings with an Indian intelligence officer, Thorat explained that he sometimes paid social visits to friends working at the embassy and said he was not surprised that he had been surveilled, “given my work.”

[Riaz Haq]

India Edges Closer to Acknowledging Role in Plot to Kill American
Government inquiry calls for legal action against unnamed person involved in foiled conspiracy

https://www.wsj.com/world/india/india-edges-closer-to-acknowledging...

India inched closer to acknowledging a role in a murder-for-hire plot aimed at an American citizen, with a government panel calling for legal action against a person involved in the matter.

Relations between Washington and New Delhi were strained when federal prosecutors revealed in November 2023 an audacious plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American lawyer who has advocated for carving out a Sikh homeland from India. Prosecutors last year brought murder-for-hire charges against Vikash Yadav, a former official with India’s overseas intelligence service. He remains at large in India.

India didn’t name the person who would face legal action in the statement issued Wednesday, though it noted the person had “earlier criminal links.” A government inquiry panel set up after the American charges were unveiled last year recommended “legal action must be completed expeditiously.”

Before Wednesday’s statement, Indian officials have consistently denied any link to violence directed against American and Canadian citizens. A violent movement to create a Sikh homeland called Khalistan from the Indian state of Punjab once raged in India in the 1980s and 1990s, but was eventually brutally suppressed by Indian police forces. Many Sikhs migrated from Punjab to the U.S. and Canada, where some continued to campaign for the idea of Sikh sovereignty, something the Indian government views as an existential threat.

“This is the closest New Delhi has come to acknowledging some degree of complicity in the alleged plot, even though it didn’t publicly disclose the nature of its findings about the individual in question,” said Michael Kugelman, the director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute.