Who was Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the Sikh activist whose killing has divided Canada and India?

By Krutika Pathi and David Cohen, The Related Press

NEW DELHI — Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh independence advocate whose killing two months in the past is on the heart of a widening breach between India and Canada, was known as a human rights activist by Sikh organizations and a terrorist by India’s authorities.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated Monday that his authorities was investigating “credible allegations that brokers of the Indian state had been linked to the killing of a Canadian citizen” after Nijjar was gunned down on June 18 outdoors a Sikh cultural heart in Surrey, British Columbia.

India denied any position within the killing, calling the allegations absurd.

Nijjar was a outstanding member of a motion to create an impartial Sikh homeland often called Khalistan, and on the time of his loss of life was organizing an unofficial referendum among the many Sikh diaspora with the group Sikhs For Justice.

He additionally owned a plumbing enterprise and served as president of an area Sikh temple or gurdwara.

Nijjar was a needed man in India, the place authorities labeled him a terrorist in 2020.

In 2016, Indian media reported that he was suspected of masterminding a bombing within the Sikh-majority state of Punjab and coaching terrorists in a small metropolis southeast of Vancouver.

He denied the allegations and advised the Vancouver Solar that he was too busy to take part in Sikh diaspora politics.

“That is rubbish — all of the allegations. I’m dwelling right here 20 years, proper? Have a look at my file. There’s nothing. I’m a tough employee. I personal my very own enterprise within the plumbing,” Nijjar advised the newspaper.

Following his loss of life, the World Sikh Group of Canada known as Nijjar an outspoken supporter of Khalistan who “typically led peaceable protests towards the violation of human rights actively going down in India and in help of Khalistan.”

India has waged an at occasions bloody wrestle towards the Sikh independence motion because the Eighties, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered a raid to seize armed separatists taking refuge in a serious Sikh temple.