Following the high-profile murder of a Canadian Sikh citizen, Canadian police have arrested members of a suspected hit squad. The three men, aged between 22 and 28, are believed to have played various roles in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, in Surrey, on Canada’s west coast, last June, Canadian public broadcaster CBC reported on Friday.
The three-member group is also linked to three other deaths, including the shooting of an 11-year-old boy in the city of Edmonton. The men were arrested Friday during police operations in at least two provinces, CBC reported. Investigators identified her several months ago and have been monitoring her closely ever since. According to the police, they were tasked by the Indian government to further investigate the “links with the Indian government”.
The affair had brought relations between Canada and India to a low point because Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had accused the Indian government of the targeted killing of the Canadian of Indian origin. Indian authorities had been looking for him for a long time and accused him of “terrorism”. His relatives said he had been warned by Canadian intelligence before the murder that he was on a “blacklist”.
Nijjar was a well-known activist for an independent state called Khalistan for the Sikh religious community located in Indian territory. The majority of India’s 27 million Sikhs live in the Indian state of Punjab, where they once had their own empire (and far beyond, to Pakistan and Afghanistan). Many people of Indian origin live in Canada, including many Sikhs. India has rejected Trudeau’s allegations, calling them “absurd” and politically motivated.
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