The Decibel - The complex man at the centre of the Canada-India feud

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

A year after the death of prominent Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, questions remain about who he really was. His murder sparked international tension between the Canadian and Indian governments and this past spring the RCMP charged four Indian nationals with his murder. To those who knew him, Nijjar was a community leader and family man but the Indian government has called him a murderous terrorist.Globe reporters Nancy Macdonald and Greg Mercer spent months speaking with members of Nijjar’s Surrey B.C. community as well as those who knew him in India. They join the show to discuss what they found about Nijjar’s enigmatic life.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

It's been a year since a massive feud broke out between Canada and India. The international tension was sparked back on June 18th of last year, when a prominent Sikh leader named Hardeep Singh Nidger was murdered outside his temple in Surrey, BC. A few months later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of killing Nidger, a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nidjar. The Indian government called the allegations, quote, absurd.

Since that time, four Indian nationals have been charged in the murder. At the center of all of this is one key question. Who exactly was Hardeep Singh Nijjar? It's a question Globe reporters Nancy MacDonald and Greg Mercer spent months looking into. And two portraits of Nidra emerged. One from people who knew him in Surrey, BC. They describe him as generous, loving, warm, committed. They would also concede he's an enigmatic guy.

Maninder once called his friend a loving, beautiful and complex soul. And another being painted by the Indian government. And according to Indian officials and Indian media, if you talk to those folks, Nidra was a terrorist. They say that he coordinated and organized bombings. They say that he incited violence and that he was a threat to safety and security in the Punjab region as part of his campaign

as they see it to create an independent country for Sikhs in Punjab. One thing that both sides agreed on is that Nijer was a figure in the movement for an independent state for Sikhs called Khalistan. It's a goal that India sees as an existential threat being pushed by terrorists. Today, Nancy and Greg join us on the show to tell us what they learned about the complex life of Hardeep Singh Nidger. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Nancy, Greg, thanks so much for joining me today. Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm sorry if I sound a little raspy. I'm fighting a cold. No worries. I'm hearing about the summer cold going around, so that's okay. But thanks so much for being here. So why is it important to sort through the different versions of this man's life, especially because now we're talking about a year after his murder? So yeah, why is it important to talk about this now? Because we're trying to get to the heart of who he was. We're trying to find out what's real and what isn't. There's two very different narratives around this man, depending on who you talk to.

And so our job as journalists is to try to sift through all of that, sift through all the disinformation, and try to get to an accurate portrait of who he really was so that Canadians can make judgments for themselves. So in a way, does understanding Hardeep Singh Niger give us a better sense of what is happening in Canada when it comes to the Khalistan movement? It really does. This is a movement, obviously, that emerged in Punjab in northern India. The Sikh diaspora has always played a hugely influential role in it. There's large Punjabi Sikh communities in Australia, the UK, the US, but Canada is the largest community of Punjabi Sikhs outside India. Because of the size and strength of that community, Canadian Sikhs have always been leading figures in that movement. This is, of course, a largely peaceful movement, but at its fringes, there are those who believe that India is never going to allow an independent Khalistan to separate by democratic means. Some at those extreme corners

of the movement who believe that violence may be necessary to achieve that goal. And I think in Hardeep, what his friends will say is you have all of that. You know, publicly, he said he believed in ballots, not bullets. But several sources close to him told us that he also believed that violence, if necessary, was justified, that deaths were justified, all this for the wider goal of Khalistan. I want to go back in time, because part of the reason these two versions of Nidja exist, the one being portrayed by the Indian government, and the one we hear from people who knew him in Surrey, BC, has to do with some Indian history. So we know that Hardeep Singh Nidger is from India's Punjab province, and he grew up in the 1980s.

What was happening in India at the time? We cannot ignore that history. That's a big part of what's playing out today. In the 1980s, we saw a real explosion in the violence around the Sikh struggle for independence in the Punjab region. Sikhs, of course, are a minority within India, but within the province of Punjab, they are a majority. And in the 1980s, we saw sort of a movement around Sikh sovereignty that led to some pretty significant events. There was a siege of

the Golden Temple, a very important holy site. Sikh separatists were holed up there with weapons. The Indian army moved in. It was a very violent incident. Within a few months, we had the assassination of Indira Gandhi, India's prime minister, by Sikh bodyguards. And that led to what many Sikhs see as a genocide, this massive reaction by mobs seeking out and killing Sikh civilians in Punjab. And by many accounts, thousands of people were killed in that violence. So that history is still playing out today. Most Canadians may not have been aware of what was happening in Punjab until this came to our country in 1985 in the Air India bombing. Still the worst terror attack that this country has seen. That was committed by Sikh

extremists, and that's been the finding of two federal inquiries. And that is, I think, the first time many Canadians became aware and woke up to what was happening in Punjab. Nancy, did Najjar's family have any direct connection to this violence? In interviews with The Globe, Mr. Najjar's friends said he often told them stories about growing up, about sick fighters visiting the family farm, staying nights there, being fed there, being clothed there, being cared for there. As a boy, one of his friends told me he would bring out bowls of hot food to militants hiding in the bush in the evening. He told friends he was inspired to join the fight by one of those men who visited the home, a guy by the name of Anoxing Labar, who was a founding member of

Babur Khalsa. This is the militant group behind the Air India bombing. So I should add that his family does dispute this characterization of their home as a safe house, but this is how Mr. Nidger would describe it to friends of his in BC. In 1995, in one of the last acts of violence in the uprising, a man by the name of Bansing, who was chief minister of Punjab, was killed in a suicide bombing. Mr. Nidra knew several of the architects of that attack. And three days after Bansanson's killing, he was picked up by police. He was held for 21 days in a refugee claim he later made in Canada. He described being brutally attacked by police while in custody. He was questioned for days and days on end. And then he managed to secure a bribe, he said in this refugee claim, and was able to get out.

And then he fled. And then, Nancy, when did Nidra get to Canada? Nidra arrived in Canada in winter of 1997, so a couple years after Biao-Tsing's killing. He landed in Toronto. He was carrying a passport, a forged passport, he later admitted. He'd cut his beard, he'd cut his hair to obscure his Sikh identity. He said he was 19, but friends in BC say actually he was about 25 at the time. He adamantly denied having any involvement in the insurgency when he spoke to Canadian officials. But that actually ended up working against him because the immigration judge said,

well, you don't have a well-founded fear of persecution in India if you're not involved at all in a militancy. And so they denied his refugee claim. But Mr. Nager quickly married a local Sikh woman who had permanent residency. And we can see from the files that he did apply for permanent residency. And what we think and what friends of his have said is that he did apply for permanent residency. And what we think and what friends of his have said is that he did get citizenship that route. We know in 2007, he became a Canadian citizen, likely after a period of time as a permanent resident. Can you tell me a little bit about the life he built here in Canada? Yeah, so the early years here were a real struggle. He and his wife Harjinder had two

little boys. He was building a business as a real struggle. He and his wife Harjinder had two little boys. He was building a business as a plumber. He was learning to speak English. They were living in a rented basement in Surrey. Eventually, they brought Hardeep's parents over from Punjab to live with them. And at the same time, he was growing his community. A lot of friends he made, he made through the temple. Initially, he was at a temple called Dashmashtar Bar.

And later, he moved over to one of the biggest and most well-known temples in BC, one called Guru Nanak Siddharthara. And so, Greg, what do we know about the people that Nijer associated with? in the Sikh community and with the referendum for Khalistan, Mr. Nidra obviously had a lot of, he was well-known. He had a lot of friends, a lot of associates. Some of them, of course, concerned India very much. And I think we tried to focus on those folks for this story. Among them, and we mentioned them in the story, was a guy named Gurdip Singh Deepa, who was a militant in the Khalistan movement. He grew up in a village nearby. He was part of a group called the Khalistan Commando Force, and they were well known for some very violent attacks in Punjab, in particular one in 1991. They stopped a train and separated Sikhs from Hindus

and slaughtered something in the range of 125 people, including children. And we know that the two, that Gurdip and Hardeep had an association through Gurdip's brother, who now lives in Surrey and told us this. Another of his associates is a man named Jagtar Singh Tara, who India says was the founder of a Sikh militant extremist group called the Khalistan Tiger Force. He was convicted in the bombing that Nancy mentioned earlier in 1995 of the chief minister of Punjab. He's an unrepentant Sikh militant. In confession letters that we obtained through the courts in India, he says these killings were justified. We did this as part of our pursuit of a free country to free ourselves from

Indian oppression. He famously escaped from prison and went on the run for many years and in that period met up with Mr. Nidger multiple times in Pakistan and Thailand and the allegation is that when he was rearrested in 2014 in Thailand and extradited back to India, that he appointed Mr. Nidger as the one to carry on the leadership of the Khalistan Tiger Force while he was behind bars. He denied that to his congregation in Surrey when it was raised out of concern. So there's some dispute about what his role would have been within the Khalistan Tiger Force, but there certainly is a link there that's hard to dismiss. And a third association that India points to is with his lawyer, Mr. Nidger and a guy in New York,

a lawyer named Kirpitwan Singh Panan. I went to New York, spent time with the lawyer to better understand the Khalistan movement. In India's view, this man is a terrorist, not because he's associated with violence, but because he is part of a campaign, a referendum for Sikh independence that under Indian law can be considered terrorism because it's advocating for the dissolution of the Indian state. He doesn't deny this. So again, these are three associates that India is deeply troubled by. And that's part of the reason why he was such a target for India. We'll be right back.

Okay, so that gives us a sense of who Hardeep Singh Nidra was. But I want to turn now to dig into the allegations India made against him. They refer to him as a terrorist. But Nancy, how are Indian officials defining terrorism here? Look, it's a definition of terrorism that Canada and many other democracies do not share. The Indian High Commissioner told us that any of these guys who are trying to propagate hatred, this is a quote, trying to divide countries, trying to dismember sovereign nations, they have to be taken down. That is our definition of terrorism. And so, Greg, what are the specific incidents that the Indian government linked to

Nijer? Well, there's a lot. I mean, what Nancy's referencing there is Nijer's role in this referendum that's calling for the creation of an independent state in Punjab. In India's view, that advocacy is terrorism. But there's also specific violent incidents that he has been blamed for. We looked at a couple of them in this story, including in 2007, there was a bombing at a cinema in Punjab that killed six people and injured dozens more. He was and is still blamed by the Indian intelligence service for masterminding that attack. The problem with that is when we look at the evidence, there's really not a whole lot connecting him to it. There's no mention of his name in the

trial transcript. Spoke to the lawyer for the defense who said his name didn't come up at all. There's nothing that India has been able to provide us that backs up this claim that he would have masterminded the attack. More recently, in 2021, there was an attempted murder in Mr. Nidger's home village. There was a Hindu priest who two men arrived on a motorcycle and pulled guns and started shooting at him through the door. He survived that attack. The Indian police charged Nidger with that attack, saying that he had coordinated this from Canada using

a criminal network that he had a connection with and was doing this because the priest, in his view, was sexually abusing women in the village. We spoke to the priest. He, for one, says he doesn't believe that Nidger had anything to do with it. He said it was a dispute over property. And again, the evidence is all based on the confession of one person sitting in an Indian prison who said that he was instructed or told by a gang leader that Nijer had requested this hit on the priest. And it's really interesting. You mentioned that the Globe, you guys actually spoke to the priest himself. That's right. Yeah. So India would not give us a visa to go to India.

So what we did was we found an experienced reporter who speaks Punjabi who was able to do the on-the-ground work for us. And he is the one who went to Niger's home village and did the interviews there, who spoke to people with direct knowledge of that case. He also spent a lot of time in the courts getting documents for us that India would not share that he was able to get, and we relied upon for this story. All right, so if there was no credible links with these incidents that you mentioned, Greg, Nancy, did you find anything that did support that Nidger was involved in any specific militant activity? Yeah, so my focus was really on what he was doing in BC. And I ended up speaking with two people who took part in some kind of militant training. This was alleged in Indian media in 2016. It was a big story in India. The two people we spoke with, one who took part in the training and one who was a confidant of one of the people involved, told us, look, this got overblown in media. This wasn't a camp. However, they did do target practice. They did weapons training. They did GPS training. They learned how to communicate securely, you know, without being overheard by security officials. And all of this was done in BC. They had vague plans, vague plans of carrying

out acts of revenge. So throughout the two previous years, the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib was desecrated. There were cases where pages of the holy book were ripped out, copies were burned, you know, stolen and held for ransom. So they had very vague goals, we were told, to carry out acts of revenge for this. One of the men who was allegedly involved in this training was arrested by police in Punjab in 2016. Police there accused him of planning to pick up a cache of weapons in Pakistan and of having plans to attack members of a Hindu organization. So what you've described here, Nancy, it sounds like the kind of activity that is maybe crossing a legal line. So did Canadian police ever detain? Yes, we know he was questioned by RCMP three times. Once was in 2016,

after these allegations about the terror camp came to light. He was held once for 24 hours. We also know that in 2016, his bank called in his loans. In a letter he received, they called him a threat to national security. He was by then on the no-fly list in Canada and the United States. But it's important to mention he was never charged in Canada with any crime. So what did Nijer's family have to say when you approached them for the story, Nancy? His son Balraj hemmed and hawed for months over whether to speak with us. Ultimately, he chose not to participate. We, of course, made he and the family aware of what we were reporting and asked them questions about the key allegations, but they declined to issue a statement. The only thing they really

did want to comment on was these allegations that their home in Punjab had been used as a safe house. This is what Hardeep had told friends, but they say it was not. And Greg, did any Indian officials comment on your reporting? India has not formally responded to the story, although a lot of people who have been very pro-India, very supportive

of the Modi government who are here in Canada, have pointed to the story and said look, see, we were right all along. The things we've been saying were true. I don't know that our story actually confirms what they have been, what they've been believing, what they've been saying. But it does help us understand some of the frustration from the Indian point of view that there has been inaction as they see it from the Canadian government on someone that they have portrayed as a threat to Indian security. So we know that the Canadian government accuses

India of his murder. And that's obviously a huge accusation, because if true, India has broken a lot of international laws. So from what you've learned in the last few months, does any of this change how Canada should be interacting with India? Well, nothing that we uncover justifies his killing, right? I mean, that's if India had solid evidence that he was involved in militant or terror activities, share that with Canadian officials and let's have an open and transparent process. That did not happen. So I think that's why people are concerned about this case is that it appears India took matters into their own hands when they didn't get action from Canada. I think I'd add

that India is a rising power. It's the most populous country in the world. It's a democracy. It's a friendly country, although it sure doesn't seem like that right now. The state of the current relationship is not serving Indians or Canadians. Canadians are suffering. There's people who want to visit friends and family in India who can't. They can't get visas. It's hurting trade relations. You know, despite what's gone on, we have to somehow find a way back to building, if not a healthy, then a normal relationship. And we should also note that India is accused of other assassinations of Sikh leaders elsewhere in the world as well. That's right. Yeah, the Department of Justice in the U.S. has written about this extensively, that Mr. Nijar's lawyer was one of the targets. They were able to stop that plot before it happened,

but there were other targets in Canada and the U.S. So this was part of a larger crackdown, it appears, on Sikh militants, Sikh separatists around the world that India appears to have said, we're going to take matters into our own hands and eliminate them. Just to end here, this profile you two have reported out presents a very complex picture of who Hardeep Singh Nidra was. And it raises questions around where is the line between an activist, a militant, and

a terrorist? I guess, what are your takeaways after your months of reporting? For me, he's still an enigma. I will say that the narrative that was presented through much of the last year of him as a human rights activist, as someone, you know, striving through peaceful means for an independent country is not the full picture. And I think we've shown that with our reporting. But there is a lot of problems, of course, with the Indian evidence against him. And so getting to the truth has been difficult, but I think it is not the full

story to say he was merely an activist. Yeah, I'd add that he's a really complicated person. And, you know, the people he loved the most describe him that way as well. As much time as we spent on him and trying to learn as much about him as we could. It's hard to conclusively say who exactly Hardeeb Singh Nijar really was. He was an activist, certainly. He was steeped in extremist politics from a very, very young age. He believed in violence and openly called for it from the temple podium. You know, as a journalist, you want answers, you want the truth. But the reality here is there's no simple truth.

Friends say he kept a lot of secrets. There were things he needed to keep secret. There were things about him that they and even his family didn't know. Nancy, Greg, it's been really great having you on the show. Thanks for being here today. It's been great. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Kelsey Arnett is our intern. Our producers are Madeline White and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening.