India waits for details on arrests in Canada over Sikh separatist’s murder

BHUBANESWAR, India – India will wait for Canadian police to share information on the three Indian men it has arrested and charged with the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in 2023, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on May 4.

Canadian police

charged the three on May 3 over the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar

and said they were probing whether the suspects had links to the Indian government.

Mr Jaishankar said he had seen news of the arrests and that the suspects “apparently are Indians of some kind of gang background... we’ll have to wait for the police to tell us”. 

The trio, all Indian nationals, were arrested in the city of Edmonton in Alberta on May 3, the police said.

Mr Nijjar, 45, was

shot dead in June outside a Sikh temple

in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population.

A few months later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

cited credible allegations of Indian government involvement,

prompting a diplomatic crisis with New Delhi.

Mr Nijjar was a Canadian citizen campaigning for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India.

The presence of Sikh separatist groups in Canada has long frustrated New Delhi, which had labelled Mr Nijjar a “terrorist”.

Canadian police said they had worked with US law enforcement agencies, without giving additional details, and suggested more detentions might be coming. REUTERS