Because of all the secondary explosions from the total detonation of diplomatic relations between Canada and India in recent days, the thing that’s getting in the way of a clear understanding of what’s going on is that you can’t tell the players without a program.
Actually, it’s not the only thing. The whole story is being put to the purpose of a long-standing popularity contest between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Justin Trudeau, and merely noticing Canada’s unclean hands in the contest is to risk coming to the attention of the authorities at Global Affairs’ foreign-interference watchdog, the Rapid Response Mechanism.
The RRM’s monitors have been on the lookout for “Modi-aligned narratives, themes and stories” of the sort that suggest the Trudeau government “panders” to Khalistani extremists and what have you. So to avoid the appearance of disloyalty to the Prime Minister’s Office, let’s just have a random look at some of the players involved.
We should start with the characters whose wiretapped conversations caused Trudeau to rise in the House of Commons on Sept. 19, 2023, to raise “credible allegations of a potential link” between Modi’s government and the murder of Khalistani militant Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., three months earlier.
Four gang-associated men have been charged in the case, and the murder trial has already been postponed four times, but Trudeau’s melodramatic insinuations that day are the basis of almost every twist in the story ever since. So let’s begin with the “link” to the Indian government that Trudeau was talking about.
Publicly named for the first time by the U.S. Department of Justice only last week, Vikash Yadav was the alleged money man behind the foiled plot to murder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Nijjar’s associate in the separatist Sikhs for Justice organization, an outlawed terrorist entity in India. Sikhs for Justice spearheads the mostly Canada-based movement that aims to carve out a theocratic Sikh republic from the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, with bits of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh hived off for good measure.
It turns out that Yadav worked for India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, until last December, when he was arrested by Delhi police for his part in a backstreet shakedown operation. Yadav and an accomplice allegedly beat up a local businessman, stole his money, his rings and a gold chain.
This is not quite the profile of a glamorous spymaster whose cunning genius has caused the rupture of diplomatic relations between Canada and India, but there we are. Charged with extortion, attempted murder and kidnapping, Yadav was released on bail in April, and nobody’s seen him since. The Indian government furiously denies any involvement with Yadav’s bad behaviour. Last week the Federal Bureau of Investigations released a wanted poster with Yadav’s face on it, and the U.S. State Department says India is co-operating in its efforts to bring Yadav to justice.
A quick word about Gurpatwant Singh Pannun: Although he comes off as a reasonable chap in his many friendly Canadian television appearances, Pannun issued a veiled threat to Air India on Monday, cautioning passengers to avoid the airline between Nov. 1 and Nov. 19. The dates coincide with the riots and murders in the bloody aftermath of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.
Nijjar comes into the Canada-India diplomatic war by way of an eavesdropped exchange between an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency officer and a loquacious and self-described gunrunner and drug dealer, Nikhil Gupta. The U.S. Justice Department alleges Gupta was contracted by Yadav to find an assassin to kill Pannun. Prosecutors say Gupta thought he’d found one in an unnamed individual who turned out to be an undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
In the transcript of a conversation with the DEA agent, Gupta claimed Nijjar’s killing was part of the murder-for-hire spree targeting Khalistanis that he was arranging. He also mentioned that there were three other Canadian “targets.” Gupta is already in U.S. custody, complaining about the food and the company he’s obliged to keep in a Brooklyn jail.
The thing is, there’s little else connecting India to Nijjar’s murder, but there’s a surfeit of evidence to suggest it was a revenge killing from the circle around Nijjar’s arch-rival, Ripudaman Singh Malik, a loudly pro-Modi figure in B.C.’s Sikh community who was murdered on July 14, 2022. Malik had started out as a diehard Khalistani militant, but he went on to become one of Surrey’s wealthiest and most powerful Sikhs. Founder of the Khalsa School and the Khalsa Credit Union, Malik was considered a traitor by his former comrades. Malik was expected to challenge Nijjar for the leadership of Surrey’s Guru Nanak Temple.
Two more key players in the drama: Jose Lopez and Tanner Fox, the lowbrow gangbangers who pleaded guilty to murdering Malik. On Monday, after entering their pleas, Lopez and Fox proceeded to pummel one another savagely in a courtroom-clearing brawl in New Westminster. There’s still no word on who paid them to kill Malik.
A new character in the script comes from a list of alleged gangsters and Khalistani terrorists that India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been after for several years. Awkwardly, one of the accused on the list is a superintendent with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
While the RCMP says Indian diplomats have been utilizing Canadian operatives in the Bishnoi criminal syndicate to target Khalistanis wanted on terror charges in India, the RCMP’s Indian counterparts in the NIA say Canada has been sheltering Khalistani-linked Bishnoi gangsters and refusing to extradite them for prosecution. The NIA has identified roughly two dozen alleged Khalistani terrorists and mobsters who are wanted on charges in India but who continue to operate unmolested in Canada. The CBSA player in the script is someone I haven’t managed to track down, so I’ll leave his name out of it.
The NIA alleges the Abbotsford, B.C. man is a member of the International Sikh Youth Federation — a Khalistani organization on terrorist lists in both Canada and India. The man allegedly played some role in the 2020 assassination of anti-Khalistani hero Balwinder Singh Sandhu. CBSA spokesperson Maria Ladouceur confirmed that the individual is a CBSA employee, and that the CBSA takes the matter seriously, but would say no more, citing the Privacy Act. Ladouceur declined comment on whether the CBSA is investigating the allegation or whether the individual has been placed on leave pending a judgment.
Finally, there’s a shadowy individual who seems to be popping up here and there quite a bit lately without any indication of who he really is. Santokh Singh Khela has appeared twice in friendly CBC reports since Trudeau’s recent House of Commons bombshell, which Khela has praised to the skies. What’s gone unreported in the CBC reports: Khela was arrested in May 1986 and charged with conspiring to blow up an Air India passenger plane out of New York. He was sentenced to life in prison in the first of a series of circuitous court proceedings that ended 10 years later, in 1996, with a final stay of charges at the Quebec Court of Appeal.
Khela never denied his association with the Babbar Khalsa organization that was implicated in the Air India bombing of 1985. According to a 2012 unsealed publication ban on file at the B.C. Supreme Court, Khela was also implicated in a plot to blow up the offices of the Indo‑Canadian Times. “In January 1986, a fully‑functioning explosive device was found outside the Modern Printing House in Surrey. The explosive device did not detonate and was disarmed by the RCMP Explosive Disposal Unit.”
The RCMP said the plot was intended to take the life of journalist Tara Singh Hayer, who had dared to challenge the Khalistanis. After a second failed assassination attempt that left him in a wheelchair, Tara Singh was shot and killed as he was getting out of his car at his home on Nov. 18, 1998.
National Post