This article says there has been a murder. It appears so far none of the eye witnesses have been interrogated. No evidence has been presented to the public. Indian authorities have denied any information has been shared. But India has been called out?
The most obvious needle of suspicion would point towards India! Why? Simply because there is a pro-Khalistan person involved. And there is a history of so-called champions for Khalistan working out of Canada. In any Sherlock Holmes mystery, it is always the least suspect who had a reason, never the most obvious one. And there are in any murder mystery till then, unseen players who had their own reasons. Could other players have taken advantage from this killing, knowing there were multiple gains to be had? A new gain could be to sully India’s growing clout globally and the recent success of G20. Remember the murder took place more than three months earlier, so why this timing? Just after G20 summit was over, even as some reports are suggesting Trudeau was planning to raise the issue at the summit itself. Surely as a G7 member, he was going at odds with his own friends; then, why this self-goal? Did Trudeau lose his plot somewhere? And, did Trudeau wade into the deep waters muddied by a host of issues coming together, alongside with the need to keep his government stay in power?
In any unnatural death, there is always a history, a motive, a perpetrator, the evidence, and an intended opportunity. The murder of Khalistan supporter Harjit Singh Nijjar on 18 June 2023 at Surrey in British Columbia is one such unusual case that has more to it than meets the eye.
The Challenge is also an Opportunity to Set Things Right! The West Must Begin to Respect India’s Concerns
by Navin berry
As a subject it has been on the boil for some time. Of the choosing of Canada’s internal politics. That a pro Khalistan lobby from nowhere, when none exists back in India, has been allowed to run riot over years!
Why? It is only the Canadians who can raise the question and also look for answers. They can find them, too, only if they are honest. When the entire issue has died down, back in Punjab, nobody even has it on mind, an unholy commitment in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ to a Sikh nation has kept it alive! Nobody in India that anyone knows of, has a separate state in mind; only these self-styled believers do, it’s festered in their own imagination, kept going for reasons best known only to them.
More importantly, as it comes out through media reports, such communities overseas have been a convenient cover for trading in drugs, weapons, mafia operations that have now crept into body politic and also geo-politics of the region. All in the name of so called ‘freedom of expression’. They have found support from countries hostile to India or who cannot see an India Rising!
Has it been an easy stick to beat India over recent years? And should India keep paying obeisance in perpetuity? These have been blatant attacks on India’s sovereignty carried out from Canadian soil! And, there has been literally no expression of concern. Some of these recent attacks on our consulates, tearing down our Indian flag, threats written on posters against Indian diplomats are indeed most deplorable and cannot be condoned. In fact, India has shown extreme patience and respect.
Whoever is responsible for the Nijjar killing, only the Heavens know best, but India has been called out as a possible suspect. This incident should give India the opportunity to say enough is enough. Not just in Canada but also in the UK and in Australia. Such hostile acts against our sovereignty cannot be tolerated when conducted on foreign soil in the name of freedom of expression. These must stop. Either these should stop, or we should we start looking upon them as acts of war?
Therefore, it is most appropriate that Minister Jaishankar, in his usual understated and moderated tone, has warned that “political convenience cannot dictate responses to terrorism, extremism and violence”. He has further said that “respect for territorial integrity and non-interference in internal affairs cannot be exercises in cherry picking”. Extremely poignant expressions, very pointed to such acts of aggression and violence being allowed to be carried out in countries that promote ‘freedom of expression’. Should such become reciprocal, what else would be an open war?
Indian authorities say no details have yet been shared. What is worse? What has been Trudeau’s act like? A cop says he has found the thief, called the thief out, and then he asks the thief to cooperate to allow the cop to nail the thief. Looks like a kid’s game, does it not?
What next? It appears good reason is playing along sidewise, as well. The statement from the Canadian Army chief that let politics be left to governments to decide, there is no change in the ground to cooperation in the Indo-Pacific military cooperation. Trudeau’s further statements that he does not intend to provoke, is another good lead to follow. That he wants good relations with India has also followed next, all good to relieve the tensions that indeed must be rolled back.
India would like to see some step back in such expressions of support for freedom of expression. These must be stopped, and seen in the light that India and every free world citizen would, as acts of treason against another country, not acceptable on the soil of friendly countries.
EAM Jaishankar’s statement that “days when a few nations set the agenda are over” is most timely again.
So, hopefully we will go back in time, trace back these irritants; the challenge in the present situation is also an opportunity to set things right, going into the future, when the global order is being re-calibrated. With recent alliances such as Quad, common concerns in the Indo-Pacific region and much else, the West needs to respect Indian concerns more than they have in the past.
Two masked suspects, described as heavyset men pumped bullets into Nijjar who was sitting inside his truck and thereafter fled the scene. Several weeks later, after painstaking investigations, the police confirmed that there was a getaway driver as well, who helped the two assassins flee the scene of crime in a silver 2008 Toyota Camry. All three suspects remain at large till date.
That this was not an ordinary murder over local issues or money or a gang land hit, became clear when no confirmed leads were thrown up as to the identity of either the assailants or the ownership of the getaway car that could lead the police to the perpetrators of the crime. It became increasingly clear that this was a sophisticated sanctioned “hit” undertaken with non-local assassins whose “footprints” could not be easily traced.
The question then arises that if this was a sanctioned hit then who ordered it?
The Indian angle
Following Nijjar’s killing, the CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) then began hunting around for motives and increasingly they were being led to infer that India was behind this hit. It appears there is suspicion in CSIS circles that India was behind the deaths of Khalistani terrorists Harvinder Singh Rinda and Harmeet Singh, aka ‘Happy PhD’, both in Lahore, Pakistan over the last two years. The Canadian agencies were helped in arriving at this inference in no small measure by their political bosses who were being fed the angle that the Nijjar hit was also a hit sanctioned and executed by Indian agents in Canada. This got covered in the local press in Canada.
India could well be active in matters pertaining to the Indian diaspora in Canada. A CSIS report in 2017 warned that Indian agents in Vancouver and Toronto planned to target Khalistanis and apparently recommended that RAW’s Canadian ops be disrupted for national security reasons. However, the Canadian government blocked CSIS’s recommendation due to “political sensitivity”, according to a confidential Canadian foreign interference review. It is logical that despite this CSIS continued to monitor what it believed to be RAW’s ops in Canada.
According to what is available on the internet in the public domain, CSIS apparently narrowed down two Indian diplomats who were extremely active intelligence officers under diplomatic cover. During their tenure, both these officers worked closely with Chandra Arya, a Liberal Party MP for Nepean, Ontario. Arya had earlier this year sponsored a petition calling on the Canadian government to reassess its Foreign Agent Registry plan in what appears to be an unusual public show of opposition from within the Liberal party caucus to their own government’s position. The Canadian government argues the registry would increase transparency around illegitimate foreign state influence activities. Registries can require individuals to formally register with the government they are trying to influence to make such dealings more transparent, with the possibility of fines or even prison time for failing to comply. Both Australia and the United States have such programs in place.
The question does arise that why is Liberal MP Chandra Arya opposing the establishment of this Registry? Any answer is best known to Arya and the reader can draw his own inference. However, Arya’s opposition to the establishment of this Registry and his association with the two Indian “diplomats” has very likely been construed by Canadian intelligence to be a possible attempt to breach national security and used as extended “evidence” to blame these diplomats for almost all the turbulence within Canada’s Indian origin population. A far cry, but this is one possible reason for the confusion.
The argument that RAW was the local mastermind of all these activities including the Nijjar execution purportedly ordered from New Delhi was reportedly pushed before Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by Jagmeet Singh Dhaliwal aka Jimmy Dhaliwal, the leader of the Canadian National Democratic Party (NDP).
Jimmy Dhaliwal and his NDP
Jimmy Dhaliwal was elected leader of the NDP in the leadership election on 1 October 2017, having won on the first ballot with 53.8 per cent of the vote. In his first interview right after he won the party leadership, Dhaliwal expressed doubts on the findings of the 18-month long inquiry led by former Canadian Supreme Court justice John Major into the Air India Kanishka 1985 bombing which left 329 people dead — 268 of them Canadians. The inquiry pointed to Talwinder Singh Parmar as the chief terrorist behind the bombing. In the same interview and many subsequent ones, Singh was unwilling to denounce extremists amidst Canadian Sikhs who pay homage to Parmar as a martyr. In 2013, during UPA-2, Dhaliwal was denied a visa to India for raising the issue of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
In a December 2017 interview with Bloomberg, Dhaliwal declared that he would not rule out working with the Conservatives to topple a federal government led by Trudeau if the NDP held the balance of power in a minority parliament.
The 2021 Canadian federal election to the 44th Canadian Parliament was held on 20 September 2021. The Justin Trudeau led Liberals won the most seats at 160. Though this fell short of the 170 seats needed for a majority in the House of Commons, they formed a minority government. Jimmy Dhaliwal’s NDP won 25 seats, holding a vital balance of power. Six months into the first session of the 44th Canadian Parliament on 22 March 2022 it was announced that the NDP would henceforth support Justin Trudeau’s minority government with confidence and supply measures i.e., they would support the minority government in motions of confidence and appropriation votes.
The China Angle: interference in Canadian politics
In 2022 and 2023, Canadian media reports alleged that China had made attempts to interfere in both elections and threatened Canadian politicians. In late 2022, the Global News television network reported on a suspected attempt by China to infiltrate the Canadian Parliament by funding a network of candidates to run in the 2019 Canadian federal election. In early 2023, The Globe and Mail newspaper published a series of articles reporting that CSIS, in several classified documents, advised Trudeau that both China’s MSS and UFWD (United Front Work Department) had employed disinformation campaigns and undisclosed donations to support preferred candidates during the 2021 Canadian federal election, with the aim of ensuring that the Liberals would win again, but only with a minority. This was a very serious allegation and its consequence was to enable Dhaliwal’s NDP to support and influence Trudeau’s minority government.
Canada’s Conservative Party demanded a public inquiry into what it called failures by the Trudeau government to warn parliamentarians of China’s activities, notify parliamentarians whom China had targeted, and further protect Canadian democratic procedures. In May 2023, the Canadian government expelled Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei, accused of intimidating a Canadian politician.
On the same day that Canada expelled Zhao Wei, the Globe and Mail reported that Canada is seeking membership in the AUKUS defence pact to counter the rising threat from China. The Department of Global Affairs and the Privy Council Office are both reported to be in negotiations to include Canada in the pact.
Trudeau has tasked Inter-Governmental Affairs Minister Dominic Le Blanc with negotiating with opposition parties to discuss the possibility of a public inquiry on the issue of foreign interference in Canadian elections. In September 2023, Trudeau also commissioned Québec Justice Marie-Josee Hogue to preside over the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions. Her mandate includes investigating foreign interference from not only China, but also from other states deemed hostile to Canada, such as Russia.
Earlier this year in May, the House of Commons passed a non-binding motion calling on the government to expel Chinese diplomats involved in political interference. The motion also called on the government to establish a public inquiry and a Foreign Agent Registry, and to force the closure of unofficial “Chinese police stations operating in Canada.” In November 2022, Canada summoned the Chinese ambassador Cong Peiwu and issued a “cease and desist” warning concerning these stations. In March 2023, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) announced investigations into two such police stations in Quebec.
Canada’s further moves against China
On 1 December 2018, the chief financial officer of Huawei and deputy chair Meng Wenzhou was arrested in Vancouver at an extradition request by US authorities on suspicion of violating US sanctions. Trudeau said that the federal government was aware of the intended arrest but was not involved in the process, but the Chinese government protested the arrest made by Canadian authorities. The arrest had ramifications for the bilateral ties of both countries.
On 10 December 2018, former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and Canadian consultant linked with North Korea Michael Spavor were detained in Beijing by the MSS. A senior adviser in Hong Kong for the International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution thinktank based in Brussels, Kovrig had worked for the Canadian diplomatic service in Beijing and Hong Kong until 2016.
It appeared that that Kovrig and Spavor’s detention (referred to in the media as the arrest of the two Michaels) was in retaliation for Canada’s holding of Meng Wenzhou based on a US arrest warrant and an instance of hostage diplomacy. On 9 December 2018, China had warned the Canadian ambassador John McCallum of severe consequences unless Meng was released
On 12 December 2018, the Communist Party-run newspaper Global Times warned that “if Canada extradites Meng to the U.S., China’s revenge will be far worse than detaining a Canadian.” On 3 June 2020 Bell Canada rejected Huawei in favour of Ericsson to supply its 5G Network. The US and Australian governments had already rejected Huawei because they were concerned that it was too closely connected to the intelligence services of China.
The editorial board of the National Post went so far as to observe that Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei was a former PLA officer and current Chinese Communist Party member, and laws “force Chinese companies to support, assist and co-operate with the state intelligence work… It would be folly to give the authoritarian regime even the potential of building a back door into networks that drive our cars, host high-level cabinet meetings and transmit government and corporate secrets.” In May 2022, the Canadian government banned Huawei and ZTE from the country’s 5G network
The Retaliation Theory and the attack on G20
Was China plotting revenge against Trudeau? Were the Chinese unhappy with the success of the G20 Summit in New Delhi and the growing clout of India among the global comity of nations? Was China looking for an opportunity to collectively target the US and India in order to spoil the G20 and undermine the increasing momentum in the QUAD. Were they getting alarmed at talk that the US was examining the possibility of leasing two nuclear attack submarines and B-1 bombers to India.
What better way than to make their Canadian nemesis the patsy? Trudeau presented himself as an excellent target! How much was China in the plot? Again, a lead but then who can tell?
ISI in the Plan: Always Ready to Jump in where India is Involved.
In order to execute such a complex false flag operation, one must first establish a pattern. For this and much more, did MSS rope in the ISI?
It appears that the ISI was also looking for an opportunity to settle scores with RAW because of the killings in February 2023 of Aijaz Ahmad Ahangar in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan and Bashir Ahmad Peer in Rawalpindi. These killings were in all probability executed by former members of the Abdul Ghani led pre-Taliban Afghan governments security service called NDS. These assassins are part of the displaced NDS diaspora spread all over Central Asia.
Both Ahangar and Peer, who had joined militancy in early 1990s and had lived in Afghanistan and Pakistan for nearly 30 years, were over 50 years old and had a high profile in terrorist ranks. Both had been designated as individual terrorists by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) respectively on 5 January 2023, and 4 October 2022. The MHA used its powers under clause (e) of sub section (1) of section 35 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. Peer was a member of Hizbul Mujaheddin responsible for launching fresh terrorists into Kashmir. Ahangar was the architect of a March 2020 suicide bombing by Kasargod-born Muhammad Muhsin, who killed a security guard and 24 Sikh worshippers at the Gurdwara Kart-e Parwan in Kabul.
The false flag operation
Under this theory, the ISI would have selected Paramjit Singh Panjwar as the first victim of this false flag operation. Panjwar was an expendable ISI asset who had outlived his usefulness. Panjwar was heading the Khalistan Commando Force-Panjwar group and was designated as a terrorist by India under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in July 2020. Panjwar was shot dead on 6 May 2023 in Lahore by gunmen. Panjwar’s guard was also injured and succumbed later. The assassins tasked were in all probability the same non-ideological ex-NDS Afghans who it can be argued may have had some dotted lines linking them to RAW from an earlier time.
The choice of the Panjwar hit was thus an extension of a pattern that now attempted to craftily weave RAW into this transforming mosaic.
The next task was to select a pro-Khalistani target in Canada whose assassination had the potential to create a significant geo-political furore. The target selected was Harjit Singh Nijjar. He was initially associated with the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and later became chief of the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF). Nijjar was also involved in a toxic war for control of well- funded Sikh religious institutions in Canada, waged through increasingly powerful criminal networks.
The war had pitched millionaire businessman and former Kanishka blast terrorist-turned-PM Modi supporter Ripudaman Malik against Nijjar. In 2022, just months before Malik’s mafia-style execution by hitmen, Nijjar had publicly called Malik a traitor and demanded he be taught a lesson. Former partners and business associates also believed themselves aggrieved by Malik’s conduct of his businesses, the Khalsa Credit Union, the Satnam Education Trust, and Papillon Imports. Malik ran the import and export business of the designer clothing brand Papillon. He also owned the Khalsa Credit Union with assets over Canadian $110 million, a banking and investment venture aimed at serving the Sikh community of British Columbia. He ran Khalsa Schools in Surrey and Abbottsford under his Satnam Educational Society. It was alleged but never proven that Nijjar was linked to Malik’s murder.
In 2020, Nijjar was declared a terrorist by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and his name was on the wanted list that the then-Punjab Chief Minister Amrinder Singh gave to Trudeau, when he visited India.
Conclusions
Who benefited from the Nijjar hit? Neither India nor the US nor Canada. A post-G20 poll reveals that Trudeau’s popularity remains at 31% while his conservative opponent Pierre Poilievre’s popularity rating has increased to 40%.
Thanks to the immature rantings of mainstream print and television in India, popular sentiment is being turned against the US. The open talk of Five Eyes is disconcerting but no facts have come out yet in public domain.
A new narrative that Hindus are under threat in Canada has started trending. Khalistan protests have started rocking key cities in Canada.
While Trudeau has first called out India, he is subsequently asking India to cooperate. Other Western allies are saying they want India to cooperate. There is a view that Dhaliwal had persuaded Trudeau to go public with his allegations against India during the G20 summit in New Delhi. If Trudeau had done so, there would have been no unanimous declaration and G20 Summit would have collapsed and its success and effectiveness cast in doubt! This would have given a sense of victory to those not too happy with its ongoing success. In which circumstances, did Biden arm twist a petulant Trudeau to keep silent till he reached home.
Though G20 was saved, a big slur has come onto the Indo-Canadian relationship. This relationship enabled India to become a nuclear power. CIRUS (Canada India Reactor Utility Services) was a nuclear research reactor supplied by Canada to India in 1954. It used heavy water (deuterium oxide) supplied by the US. It was the second nuclear reactor to be built in India. Since there were no IAEA safeguards in those days, CIRUS produced some of India’s initial weapons grade plutonium stockpile, as well as the plutonium for India’s 1974 Pokhran nuclear test.
Canada indirectly helped us become a stable nuclear power, and with the huge Indian diaspora, it is quite sad to see the mainstream TV channels, some more vehemently than others, demonising that country. Canada is an old friend and deserves better, even if it at present it is being run by an unsure leader under pressure of his own domestic compulsions.
