The Fifth Estate broadcasts exclusive footage of the moment Nijjar was murdered by two Indian state agents
LONDON: There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally ordered the murder of Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar and directed the murder-for-hire plot of the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) leader, pro -Khalistan, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, according to an explosive documentary broadcast on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
The hour-long investigative documentary, The Fifth Estate, aired exclusive footage of the moment Nijjar was murdered by two Indian state agents as he left the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, on the night of June 18, 2023.
The video showed Nijjar leaving the Gurdwara parking lot in his van and a car of assassins driving along with his van, advancing quickly and then blocking the exit. The two hitmen then come out and shoot Nijjar, killing him instantly and then escaping in a silver Toyota Camry.
The documentary said that due to the shock and overwhelming evidence of India's role, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau openly accused the Indian government of ordering the assassination, a claim that has severely damaged diplomatic relations between Canada and India. .
The documentary made shocking new revelations and revealed details of how deeply the Indian state has been involved in planning the murder of pro-Khalistani Sikhs, primarily Pannun and Nijjar, but also several others.
In the documentary, Pannun said he believes Modi, on the advice of his national security adviser, Ajit Doval, personally sanctioned the head of the Indian spy agency's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Samant Goel, to carry out the assassination plots, involving his diplomatic missions and agents. stationed there as diplomats.
The SFJ leader told the television channel: “I have no doubt that Narendra Modi ordered the murder of Nijjar and therefore the blame lies with the Indian state. I would be surprised if the Indian High Commission in Canada did not know who will be hired and who will be killed. When you offer a bounty on Nijjar's head and mine, and you offer rewards to locate him and me in Surrey and New York, what do you expect?
As Pannun spoke, the CBC broadcast images of Indian television announcing bounties on their heads and glorifying the murders of Sikhs.
The documentary showed that the threat of assassination of Pannun, who is leading a global campaign for the Sikh referendum, is so serious and imminent to US intelligence that at least seven security men monitor him at all times, forcing him to move from home to home. house and enter your house. apartment for checks before he is allowed inside to make sure there are no hitmen hiding inside.
The documentary said the coordinated attack on Nijjar involved six men and two vehicles. The Fifth Estate spoke with two witnesses who witnessed the murder.
The first witness said: “I tried to put pressure on his chest and shake him to see if he was breathing. But he was totally unconscious. He wasn't breathing.” He said he chased the two men until they got into the Toyota Camry.
“A car came from across the alley and they got into it. There were three other people sitting in that car,” he said. “We could smell the gun smoke, the smell of the guns was everywhere.”
He CBC He said the Indian government and media mocked Trudeau for months by saying there was no evidence of Indian involvement until November last year, when evidence surfaced in New York City as the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a U.S. indictment. which revealed details of the foiled plot to kill Nijjar's friend and leader, Pannun.
The indictment accused Indian national Nikhil Gupta of attempting to arrange Pannun's murder at the behest of Indian intelligence officers who were secretly filmed by US intelligence while planning the murder of Nijjar and Pannun.
According to the indictment, the plot was foiled when Gupta mistakenly asked for help in hiring a hitman from a person who turned out to be a confidential informant reporting to U.S. authorities. Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic on June 30, 2023 on charges of conspiracy to murder and is awaiting extradition to the United States.
He CBC He said the indictment also revealed allegations that the Indian government was planning at least three more murders in Canada last June.
The CBC said, citing the US indictment, that hours after Nijjar was killed on June 18, Gupta sent a video of Nijjar's body to the person he was trying to hire as a hitman and told him to “quickly” kill the target. from New York. , Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual Canadian-American citizen who is general counsel for Sikhs for Justice.
Pannun told The Fifth Estate about his close friendship with Nijjar and their shared commitment to campaigning for Khalistan.
“Nijjar told me that Canadian intelligence agencies had approached him just a day earlier and warned him that his life was in danger,” Pannun told The Fifth Estate's Bob McKeown. “That day he seemed very, very worried.”
Nijjar was visited by RCMP officers and assigned warning duty two days before his death.
Pannun said in the documentary that the non-binding Khalistan referendum in Western countries is the reason why he and Nijjar became targets of the Indian government. He said Canadian intelligence should say what measures they had taken to protect Nijjar.
“We follow international laws and campaign for the Sikh people, the indigenous people of Punjab, to be given the opportunity to vote,” he said. “That's the reason they killed Nijjar, that's the reason they wanted to kill me, to stop a peaceful democratic process of the Khalistan referendum.”
The Fifth Estate also aired interviews of five other Canadian Sikhs, all of them Khalistan supporters, who have been served with “duty to warn” notices by Canadian police, meaning their lives are at risk from the Indian state. Notices are given to people who police believe are likely to be targeted and in imminent danger due to threats to their lives.
The documentary says multiple duty-to-warn notices and details of the US indictment point to “three targets” in Canada, but the role of Indians in other murders in Canada cannot be ruled out.
Nijjar, a strong supporter of an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, was leading Sikhs For Justice and chief coordinator of the Khalistan Referendum campaign in Canada.
He was a close associate of SFJ founder and New York lawyer Pannun, who at the same time was subject to the Indian assassination plot, but his assassination plot was foiled by American security agencies. Nijjar was also president of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in British Columbia, the largest Gurdawara in Canada.
