In the eye of a diplomatic storm raging between India and Canada is a plumber who sneaked into Canada under the fake name of Ravi Sharma, styled himself as a 'tiger' of Khalistan and was one of the most-wanted Khalistani terrorists by Indian authorities. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused Indian government of getting Nijjar killed while India has rejecetd his allegation. Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat, and India retaliated by expelling a Canadian diplomat.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the chief of Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) and an associate of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a leader of another Khalistani group, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), was being pursued by Indian security agencies for close to a decade. As with many other Khalistani leaders and separatist terror groups, he too enjoyed a safe shelter in Canada, until he was killed by unidentifed gunmen at a gurdwara in Surrey, Vancouver, in June this year.
The beginning of Nijjar
Following the template of a large number of Khalistani militants, and others who just wanted to get the benefit of Western countries willing to shelter people from Punjab who would claim to be a victim of Indian police during the terrorist movemnt in Punjab, Nijjar too fled to Canada.
Twenty-six years ago, a man named 'Ravi Sharma' arrived in Toronto and sought asylum claiming persecution by the Indian government. His affidavit to the Canadian government claimed severe torture by Punjab Police and wrongful arrest of his family members. He was none other than Nijjar, a resident of Bharsinghpur village in Punjab's Jalandhar. Canada's immigration records show that Nijjar's passport was fake, says a TOI report.
How Nijjar became a Canadian citizen
The government of Canada wasn't convinced by Nijjar's story and his file remained mysteriously open for about four years during which he married a Canadian citizen to file fresh claims.
A plumber by profession, Nijjar only got respite, and citizenship, in 2001, intelligence sources told TOI, strangely around the time he joined Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) using his close links with Jagtar Singh Tara, a former chief of KTF. BKI was once headed by Sukhdev Singh Babbar, one of the most dreaded Khalistani terrorists who was gunned down by Punjab Police in 1992 after an encounter.
ijjar's Thailand escapade
Nijjar and Tara remained thick over the years. Their close proximity was uncovered in 2014 when Nijjar travelled to Thailand to meet Tara - involved in the assassination of former Punjab CM Beant Singh - and provided financial help, an intelligence official told TOI.
An intelligence note of the time says that on Tara's instructions, Nijjar travelled to Pakistan to coordinate his escape from Thailand with ISI's help. The escape plan never succeeded and Tara, who had been cornered by Indian intelligence in Pattaya, was eventually brought to India a year later in 2015. A Punjab government report had disclosed that Thai authorities had detained Nijjar when he was flying back from Lahore to Vancouver via Bangkok.
Nijjar returned to Canada and became the head of the KTF, the Khalistani terror group. An Interpol Red Corner notice was issued against him in 2016, reflecting the global community's commitment to bringing him to justice.
Nijjar's 'terror camp' in Canada
Nijjar's outfit, the KTF, began large-scale indoctrination and recruitment of youths (mostly drug addicts) from Punjab, turning them into hitmen after training in Canada and sending them to Punjab for targeted killings. This plot was first uncovered in some of the killings orchestrated by Nijjar during 2014-2016 and with the arrest of a key KTF member, Mandeep Singh Dhaliwal. Nijjar was also declared a proclaimed offender in connection with 2007 Shingaar cinema blast in Ludhiana in which six people were killed.
Nijjar was accused by Indian authorities of running a terror camp near Mission city in British Columbia, Canada, and imparting training to terror modules. Almost six months after the Pathankot terror attack in 2016, Indian intelligence agencies sent an alert to Canada’s Justin Trudeau government, saying that pro-Khalistan terrorists were running a camp near Mission city to carry out strikes in Punjab. The Punjab government had submitted a report to the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs to seek Nijjar's extradition.
“Nijjar has been imparting arms training to his group in Canada after the arrest of former KTF chief Jagtar Tara in Thailand by Interpol last year. He took Mandeep Singh and three more Sikh youths recently for AK-47 training in a range near Mission where they were made to fire for four hours daily," the report had said.
Both Mandeep and Nijjar had made frequent visits to Pakistan for arms training with the ISI, said the report. Attached with the report were their recent photographs brandishing AK-47s outside Nankana Sahib gurdwara in Pakistan.In 2016, Nijjar had written to Canadian PM Trudeau, urging him to dispel Indian government's “fabricated, baseless, fictitious and politically motivated” allegations against him. He claimed that he had been campaigning for rights of the Sikhs and human rights violations also in India. "I am a Sikh nationalist who believes in and supports Sikhs' right to self-determination and independence of Indian occupied Punjab through a future referendum... My Sikh nationalist activities are peaceful, peaceful, democratic and protected under the Canadian charter of Rights and Freedom”, he wrote in his letter to Trudeau.
In 2020, Nijjar was listed as a terrorist after being booked under UAPA for training and financing KTF module members.
The murder in a temple
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) in July last year declared a cash award of Rs 10 lakh against Nijjar who already figured in the list of individual terrorists in Schedule 4 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and was a wanted accused in at least four NIA cases relating to Sikh radicalism including the conspiracy to kill a Hindu priest Kamaldeep Sharma of a temple at Phillaur in Jalandhar district of Punjab. Nijjar was a native of the priest’s village.
In association with another Canada-based terrorist Arshdeep Singh Dala, Nijjar was said to have directed the assailants to shoot down Hindu priests as part of a larger conspiracy to target prominent Hindu religious personalities with an aim to create a sense of fear and disharmony in the society. All this was in line with Khalistanis routinely painting separatist and anti-India slogans on Hindu temples in Canada as well as Australia.
Nijjar's spotlight moments
Nijjar had become a key leader of Khalistanis in Canada. Nijjar's last prominent public appearance was an event involving display of a controversial tableau depicting the assassination of former PM Indira Gandhi during a 'Nagar Kirtan' procession in Brampton in June. He was also seen at the forefront of a mob which indulged in a vandalism incident at the at the Ottawa high commission in March. He was actively engaged in plans to carry out referendums in Canada and Punjab on the Khalistan issue.
Who murdered Nijjar?
On June 18 this year, Nijjar was shot dead by two unidentified men in the parking lot of the gurdwara in Surrey near Vancouver as he headed home for the day.
Trudeau's allegations about Indian government's involvement in the killing of Nijjar seem to have found some traction with the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – comprising English-speaking democracies the US, UK and Australia, New Zealand and Canada – who called the accusations serious, although they were also reported to have rejected Canada’s request to jointly denounce the murder.
However, Canada's own investigators had suspected it to be the fallout of a bloody feud between rival Khalistan groups. One of the initial lines of probe hovered around an ongoing battle over the Sikh religious institutions in Canada where the role of the group led by the faction formed by Ripudaman Singh Malik was under focus. Malik, a member of terror outfit Babbar Khalsa, was also an accused in the 1985 bombing of Air India's Flight 182 Kanishka. He was killed in July 2022 by two local Canadian criminals. A year later, Nijjar was gunned down in a similar fashion in the parking lot of a gurudwara. The Canadian media, including the 'Vancouver Sun', had reported that the police were looking at two motives - a "more local political dispute in Surrey" being one of them. The other was to ascertain if Nijjar was killed because of his "Khalistan activism".
Canadian criminals. A year later, Nijjar was gunned down in a similar fashion in the parking lot of a gurudwara. The Canadian media, including the 'Vancouver Sun', had reported that the police were looking at two motives - a "more local political dispute in Surrey" being one of them. The other was to ascertain if Nijjar was killed because of his "Khalistan activism".
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