New Delhi: A security footage has emerged purportedly showing the killers of slain pro-Khalistan leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar exiting the parking space of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in a silver Toyota Camry before they shot him dead outside the gurdwara in Surrey, Canada.
The killing of Nijjar in June last year had led to a diplomatic crisis between New Delhi and Ottawa after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged that the Indian government orchestrated the killing.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired the footage in a documentary produced as part of investigative series, ‘The Fifth Estate’.
The footage released by the Canadian public broadcaster showed Nijjar’s pickup truck and the sedan moving out from the parking lot parallel to each other before the sedan picked up pace and blocked Nijjar’s truck. The documentary claimed that the two killers came out of the sedan wearing masks and pumped bullets into Nijjar before fleeing in the car.
ThePrint could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.
The 43-minute-25-second-long documentary also reported the accounts of eyewitnesses Bhupinderjit Singh Sidhu and Malkit Singh who heard the gunshots. One of them claimed to have chased the killers but failed to catch them.
According to the documentary, the two eyewitnesses were playing in a nearby field when they heard the sound of “crackers”. They followed the sound and saw two masked men in black clothes running away.
“Bhupinder went towards the gurdwara to see what happened, and I ran towards those two masked men. One of them was heavily built, and he struggled to catch his breath after running. I looked at their eyes, and they looked like Indians. They sat in the car after some distance and fled,” Singh said in the documentary.
Sidhu, who found Nijjar, said in the documentary, “I tried to press his chest and tried to shake him to check if he was breathing, but he was unconscious. He was not breathing.”
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‘Duty to warn’ notices from RCMP
Nijjar’s son Balraj Nijjar claimed in the documentary that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had alerted his father about an “imminent threat” to his life in July 2022. He said the RCMP officers issued his father a “duty to warn” notice, but when his father asked about the origins of those possible threats to his life, the officers were “reluctant” to answer questions.
The documentary linked these notices sent to Canadian Sikh activists to the murder of Ripudaman Singh Malik in Surrey on 14 July 2022. Malik, an accused in the Air India Kanishka Bombing in 1985 that left 329 passengers dead, was acquitted in the case in 2005. The documentary claimed that Sikh activists in Canada got the “duty to warn” notices shortly afterwards.
It claimed that in the murders of both Malik and Nijjar, there was a similarity in the involvement of the two killers who pumped bullets into their bodies.
The documentary also claimed that Malik had a meeting scheduled with a person with the first name of a former consular officer at the Indian consulate in Vancouver based on Malik’s personal journal and phone call history. Malik was shot dead in his parking space half an hour before the meeting time, according to the documentary.
Maninder Singh, the gurdwara spokesperson who shared a close relationship with Nijjar, received the ‘duty to warn’ notice from RCMP officers, it said. Gurmeet Singh Toor, the last man seen walking behind Nijjar when he was coming out of the gurdwara, also received the same notice.
Pannun ‘assassination plot’
The documentary also shared detailed analysis of an alleged assassination plot by an Indian government officer with the help of Nikhil Gupta to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the legal counsel and chief of the Sikhs for Justice. The organisation promotes the idea of a separate Sikh state.
The documentary highlighted the worldview, accounts and perspectives of Pannun, who has been declared a terrorist by India on account of his alleged role in terror activities.
Pannun claimed he was a target because he wanted to give the people of Punjab freedom of choice by organising a referendum in which they could vote for separate statehood.
He also talked about his relationship with Nijjar. Pannun said he met Nijjar in Surrey in 2008 when they were both campaigning to popularise the term “genocide” for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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