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 seek leader named hardip Singh nider was murdered outside his temple in Sur BC a few months later prime minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of killing Niger a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil over the past number of weeks Canadian Security agent genes have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen hardip Singh Nar 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 hardip Singh nider it’s a question Globe report ERS Nancy McDonald and Greg Mercer spent months looking into and two portraits of nider emerged one from people who knew him in Sur 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 Niner was a terrorist they say that he coordinated and organized uh bombings they say that he incited violence uh and that he was a threat to Safety and Security in the Punjab region as part of his campaign as as they see it to create an independent country for for siks in Punjab one thing that both sides agreed on is that Niger was a figure in the movement for an independent state for siks called kistan 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 sing nider I’m Cheryl southernland and this is the decel 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 cuz we’re trying to get to the heart of 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 and try to get to an accurate portrait of who he really was so that Canadians can make judgments for themselves mhm so in a way does understanding hard deep sing ner give us a better sense of what is happening in Canada when it comes to the kisan movement you know it really does um this is a movement obviously that emerged in Punjab and Northern India but the sick diaspora has always played a hugely influential role in it there’s large Punjabi seat communities in Australia the UK the us but Canada has the largest community of Punjabi SS outside India because of the size and strength of that community Canadian six 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 kistan 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 hard what his friends will says you have all of that you know publicly he said he believed in ballots not bullets but several was 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 of pistan I I want to go back in time because part of the reason these two versions of njer exist the one being protrayed by the Indian government and the one we hear from people who knew him in sir BC has to do with some Indian history so we know that hard signer is from India’s Punjab Province and he grew up in the 1980s um 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 sik struggle for Independence um in the Punjab region siks 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 seek sovereignty that led to some pretty significant events there was a a Siege of of the Golden Temple a very important holy site seek separatists who were H up there with weapons the Indian army moved in it was a very violent uh incident within a few months we had the assassination of andira Gandhi India’s prime minister by seek bodyguards and that led to what many seeks see as a genocide this massive reaction by mobs uh seeking out and and killing seek 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 seek extremist 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 um Nancy did diar’s family have any direct connection to this violence in interviews with the globe Mr nigger’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 the home guy by the name of anoing Babar who was a founding member of babber KSA this is the militant group behind the area 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 nider would describe it to friends of his in BC in 1995 um in one of the last acts of violence in in the uprising a man by the name of Bon Singh who was chief minister of Punjab was killed in a suicide bombing Mr nider knew several of the architects of that attack and 3 days after Von’s killing um 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 uh he said in this Refugee claim and was able to get out and then he fled um and then Nancy when did nider get to Canada nider arrived in Canada in Winter of 1997 so a couple years after Bing’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 uh to obscure his seek identity he said he was 19 but friends uh 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 nider quickly married a local sick 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 uh that he did get citizenship that route uh we know in 2007 he became a Canadian citizen likely after uh 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 har Jinder 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 Sur eventually they brought Hardy’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 uh he made through the temple initially he was at a temple called dashmash darar and later he moved over to uh one of the biggest and most well-known temples in BC One called gurunanak sora and so Greg what do we know about the people that Niner associated with so through his work uh in the in the siik community and with the referendum for Kalan Mr nider obviously had a lot of he was welln he had a lot of friends a lot of Associates some of them of 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 ger Singh Deepa U who was a a militant in the Kalan movement he grew up in a village nearby he was part of a group called The kistan Commando force and they were well known for some very violent attacks in Punjab in particular one in 1991 they stopped a train and and separated siks from Hindus and slaughtered something in the range of 125 people including children and we know that the two that that Gertie and hard had an association through gerde’s brother who who now lives in Syria and told us this another of his associates is uh is a man named jagar Singh Tara who India says was the founder of a seek militant extremist group called The kistan Tiger Force he uh was convicted in the bombing that Nancy mentioned earlier in 19 5 of the the chief minister of Punjab he’s an unrepentant seek militant in confession letters that we obtain 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 uh he famously escaped from prison and went on the run for many years and and in that period met up with Mr Niner 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 nider as his the one to to carry on the leadership of the Kalan Tiger Force while he was behind bars he denied that to his congregation uh in Sur when it was raised out of concern uh so there is some dispute about what his role would have been within the within the Kalan Tiger Force but there certainly is a is a link there that’s hard to uh dismiss um and a a third Association that India points to is with his lawyer Mr nider and a guy in New York a lawyer named kpet Juan Singh pannan I went to New York spent time with the lawyer um to better understand the kistan 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 seek Independence that under Indian law can be considered terrorism because it’s advocated for the dissolution of the Indian State uh and he doesn’t deny this so again these are these are three Associates that India is deeply troubled by and uh that’s part of the reason why he was such a target for for [Music] India we’ll be right back okay so that gives us a sense of who Hardeep sing nider was but I want to turn now to dig into the allegations India made against him they refer to him as a terrorist um but Nancy how are Indian officials defining terrorism here look um it’s a definition of terrorism that Canada and many other democracies uh do not share um the Indian ey 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 and so Greg what are the specific incidents that the Indian government linked to ner well there’s a lot I mean what nany’s referencing there is is Niner’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 um including in in 2007 there was a bombing at a Cinema uh in Punjab that killed six people and injured dozens more he was and and is still blamed by the Indian intelligence service for masterminding that attack U the problem with that is when we look at the evidence there’s really not a whole lot connecting him to it uh there’s no mention to of his name in the trial transcript spoke to the lawyer for the defense U 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 uh more recently in 2021 there was an attempted murder in in Mr niger’s uh home Village there was a a Hindu priest who two men arrived on a motorcycle and uh pulled guns and started shooting at him through the door he survived that attack the Indian police charged ner with that attack saying that he had coordinated this from Canada using a criminal Network that he had connect with and was doing this because the priest in his view was was sexually abusing women in the village we spoke to the priest he for one says he doesn’t believe that ner had anything to do it he said it was a dispute over property and again the the evidence is all based on the confession of one person sitting in an Indian prison who uh who said that he was instructed or told by a gang leader that that Niner had requested this hit on the priest and that’s really interesting you 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 uh 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 Niner’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 uh he was able get and and we relied upon for this story all right so if there was no credible links with these incidents that you mentioned Greg um Nancy did you find anything that did support that nider 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 20 16 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 uh 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 uh they learned how to communicate securely you know without being overheard by uh 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 the two previous years um the sick holy book The Guru Grant saahib was desecrated uh there were cases where pages of the holy book were ripped out uh copies were burned you know stolen and held for ransom so they had the 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 cash of weapons in Pakistan and uh of having plans to attack members of a Hindu organization so so what you’ve described here Nancy it it sounds like the kind of activity that is maybe crossing a legal line um so did Canadian police ever detain ner yes um we know he was questioned by RCMP three times once was in6 after these allegations about uh 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 noly list in Canada and the United States but it’s important to to mention he was never charged in Canada with any crime so what did Niner’s family have to say when you approached them for the story Nancy his s b RJ hemmed and haw for for months over whether whether to uh speak with us ultimately he he chose not to par 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 um these allegations that their home in Punjab had been used as a safe house um this is what hardip had told friends but they say it was not uh 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 uh very Pro India very uh supportive of the Modi government who are here in in Canada had pointed to the story and saying 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 uh 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 uncovered justifies his killing right I mean that’s that 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 some I think we have to somehow find a way back to building if not a healthy than a normal relationship and we should also note that India is accused of other assassinations of seek leaders elsewhere in the world as well that’s right yeah the Department of Justice in the US has uh written about this extensively that uh Mr nider uh lawyer was one of the targets they were able to uh stop that plot before it happened but there were other Targets in Canada and the US so this was part of a larger Crackdown it appears on sick militants sick separatists around the world that India appears to have said we’re we’re going to uh take matters into our own hands and eliminate them just to end here that this profile you two have reported out presents a very complex picture of who Hardeep sing ninja was and it raises questions around where is the line between an activist a militant and a terrorist I guess what what are your takeaways after your months of reporting for for me he’s still an enigma I will say that the The Narrative that was presented through much of the last year of him as a human rights activist as someone you know striving for peace 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 uh has been difficult but I think it is not the full story to say he was merely activist I think yeah I’d add that he’s 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 and trying to learn as much about him as we could it’s hard to conclusively say who exactly Hardeep signiture 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 journal you want answers you want the truth but the reality here is there’s no simple truth um 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 southernland Kelsey Arnette is is our intern our producers are meline white and Rachel leevy McLaughlin David Crosby edits the show Adrien Chung is our senior producer and Matt frer is our managing editor thanks so much for listening
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.
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