Two hooded gunmen, a silver getaway car and a slain Sikh leader

SURREY, British Columbia – The Sikh temple leader, who was wanted as a terrorist in India, walked towards his pickup truck late one Sunday in June after a long day at his place of worship.

He and an associate discussed some upcoming programmes while making their way across the large carpark behind the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple near Vancouver, British Columbia.

It was Father’s Day, and once inside his grey Dodge Ram, the leader, Mr Hardeep Singh Nijjar, called his family and said he was heading home.

But he had barely reached the carpark exit when, according to temple officials who had watched the temple’s security video, a white vehicle suddenly blocked him.

Then, witnesses said they heard a burst of automatic gunfire, and saw two hooded men running away from Mr Nijjar’s immobilised pickup.

“It went on for about 10 seconds,” said one witness, Mr Bhupinder Jit Singh, a temple member who had been playing football in a field next to the carpark.

Mr Bhupinder Jit Singh was the first to reach the Dodge Ram, where he found Mr Nijjar still buckled into his seat and slumped over the centre console, his right arm stretched out towards the passenger seat.

Bullets had pierced his arms, chest, shoulders and head, spattering blood across his white and light purple shirt. His blue turban was hanging off the right side of his head.

“He didn’t seem to be breathing,” recalled the 29-year-old.

The violent and

professional killing of Mr Nijjar

now lies at the centre of a

diplomatic clash between Ottawa and New Delhi

that comes just as Western allies have been trying to strengthen ties with the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Interviews with three witnesses to the killing and descriptions of the security footage showing the moments leading up to the shooting provide details about the gunmen, whom Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has branded as “agents” of the Indian government.

The gunmen were dressed in black, with hoods over their heads and black medical masks covering their faces. One of them dropped a blue medical glove that was later recovered by the police, according to witnesses.

They fired 30 to 50 shots at their victim, the witnesses said.

According to Western allied officials, there is intelligence that supports Ottawa’s charge that New Delhi was involved, including the intercepted communications of Indian diplomats in Canada which indicate their involvement in the plot.

India has denied the charges.

Now, the brazen killing threatens to upend not only the two countries’ relationship, but also United States President Joe Biden’s efforts to court India as a counterweight to Russia and China.

Ottawa has said that the killing was orchestrated by New Delhi, which had labelled Mr Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and a prominent advocate for Sikh separatism in India, a terrorist in 2020 and called for his arrest.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp, which is owned by the federal government, reported that “when pressed behind closed doors, no Indian official has denied the bombshell allegation at the core of this case – that there is evidence to suggest Indian government involvement in the assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil”.

Ottawa has declined to release details of the intelligence, saying it did not want to prejudice the investigation. But a Canadian government official and Western allied officials said the intelligence had been gathered by multiple countries.

Canada is

a member of the so-called Five Eyes,

an alliance that shares intelligence information. It also includes the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

In the aftermath of the killing, US intelligence agencies offered their Canadian counterparts context that helped Ottawa conclude that India had been involved, according to allied officials.

Yet what appears to be the “smoking gun”, the intercepted communications of Indian diplomats, was gathered by Canadian officials, allied officials said.

At the centre of the dispute between Canada and India is Mr Nijjar, who was 45 when he died. He moved to Canada in 1997 after living through more than a decade of deadly conflicts between Sikh separatists and the government in India.

Canada is now home to about 770,000 Sikhs, the largest such community outside India.

Mr Nijjar eventually settled in Surrey, which is home to one of Canada’s largest Sikh populations. There, he ran a plumbing business and lived with his wife and two adult sons.

He had long championed the creation of an independent Sikh homeland – carved out of India’s Punjab region – that would be called Khalistan.

His advocacy and influence rose to a new level in 2019 when he became president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple, the oldest, largest and most politically powerful of the dozen or so Sikh temples in Surrey.

Mr Nijjar used the temple as a platform where he openly criticised the Hindu-led Indian government’s treatment of its Sikh minority.

In 2020, the Indian government declared him a terrorist, accusing him of plotting an attack in India and leading a terror group.

Mr Nijjar denied the charges.

His allies said they were meant to discredit him and undermine their movement. They believe his advocacy led to his killing on June 18.

That morning, Mr Nijjar had been in good spirits while getting ready to leave home for the temple, recalled his elder son, Mr Balraj Singh Nijjar, 21. He and his younger brother had given their father a pair of jeans as a Father’s Day gift.

Mr Nijjar, who had a sweet tooth and was trying to lose weight, joked that his sons should have picked a smaller size to “encourage him to diet”.

At the temple, Mr Nijjar spent the day tending to business and speaking to congregants.

“I spent the whole day with him. We had lunch and tea together,” said Mr Gurmeet Singh Toor, 52, a temple official who had been friends with Mr Nijjar for the past nine years.

Around 8.30pm, Mr Toor recalled, he and Mr Nijjar left the temple building together. There was still daylight outside as the two men walked across the carpark. They said goodbye and went to their respective vehicles.

Inside his pickup truck, Mr Nijjar called his family, his elder son recalled. When told that his wife had made one of his favourite dishes, a sweet dessert called seviyan, Mr Nijjar sounded happy and said he would be home right away, his son added.

Mr Nijjar started off and nearly made it out of the carpark when a white vehicle blocked his path. Security cameras situated about 400m away showed that the same white vehicle had been waiting in the carpark, according to temple officials who viewed the security footage.

“As Mr Nijjar is trying to exit, it speeds up and gets in front of him and blocks him off,” said Mr Gurkeerat Singh, 30, a close associate of Mr Nijjar’s who viewed the security video. “And then two people come. You can see them on foot.”

In the video, the two men, who were hiding in nearby bushes, were then seen going to the driver’s side of Mr Nijjar’s pickup and firing at him. The police received a report of a shooting at the temple at 8.27pm.

Mr Malkit Singh, 42, who was playing football with Mr Bhupinder Jit Singh at the moment of the shooting, said he saw the two gunmen fleeing and began chasing after them.

One of the gunmen was tall and skinny, the other heavyset, he said.

“He was having a hard time running,” he said, adding that one of the gunmen brandished a gun in his direction.

But Mr Malkit Singh kept following, he said, after he got a phone call from Mr Bhupinder Jit Singh telling him that it was “the president of the gurdwara who had been shot”.

Mr Malkit Singh, who had been playing football barefoot, said he followed the gunmen across a nearby park and saw them get into the back seat of a silver sedan.

The police later identified the getaway vehicle as a silver 2008 Toyota Camry and said its driver had been waiting inside for the gunmen.

As Mr Malkit Singh watched the Camry speed away, he said, the other two witnesses to the shooting were also in pursuit.

Mr Toor, who had walked out of the temple with Mr Nijjar, said he had been in his own vehicle about 200m behind Mr Nijjar when the shooting took place. He joined Mr Bhupinder Jit Singh, who had run to Mr Nijjar’s pickup.

“I wasn’t sure whether he had died or not,” Mr Toor recalled. “I was focused on catching the shooters.”

The two men got into Mr Toor’s vehicle and began driving south.

“I assumed they would be going in that direction,” Mr Toor said. “But we weren’t able to find them.” NYTIMES