Canada arrests three men for murder of Sikh activist. Indian intelligence involved

The killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijar on June 18 last year near Vancouver sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries, as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly linked it to Indian intelligence.

India dismissed the claims as “absurd” and reacted furiously, temporarily restricting visas to Canadian citizens and forcing Canada to withdraw its diplomats.

Those arrested are Indian nationals, two aged 22 and one aged 28, who are facing charges of first degree murder and conspiracy. They are accused of being the shooter, driver and lookout on the day of Nijar’s murder.

Police arrested the men in the city of Edmonton, where they live. All three have lived in Canada for three to five years, police said at a news conference.

Canadian broadcaster CBC reported that police are also investigating a possible connection to three other murders, including that of an 11-year-old boy in Edmonton.

Nijar, who immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2015, has been promoting the creation of an independent Sikh state of Khalistan in northern India, which could include parts of Pakistan. India had declared him wanted for terrorism and planning murder.

Nijar was shot dead by masked assailants in the parking lot of a Sikh temple outside Vancouver.

Three months after Nijjar’s murder, Canada charged the Indian government in connection with the killing and expelled the Indian diplomat who headed India’s intelligence service in Canada.

In November, the US Department of Justice charged an Indian citizen living in the Czech Republic with planning a similar assassination attempt on US soil. US intelligence believed that the plan was approved by then Indian intelligence chief Samant Goel.

There are 770,000 Sikhs living in Canada, which is about two percent of the country’s population.

The Sikh separatist movement has all but been eradicated in India, where security forces bloodily suppressed Sikh riots in the state of Punjab in the 1980s.