A murder in Canada and an attempted one in New York suggest a transnational campaign of violence that has imperilled Indian diplomacy with the West, Taran Dugal writes.
The next day, June 18th, Nijjar made his way to the outskirts of Vancouver to visit the gurdwara where he worshipped. A plumber by trade, he’d been the temple’s president for four years, and had spent much of that time advocating for the creation of a homeland for Sikhs , called Khalistan, in an area of northern India that includes the state of Punjab.
The separatist movement, which has inspired generations of activists, has long infuriated the country’s leadership. When Nijjar left the temple that evening, he was in a good mood. It was Father’s Day, and his son Balraj had given him a pair of jeans. They’d planned a special meal: pizza and seviyan, a sweet pudding that was Nijjar’s favorite dessert. From the parking lot, Nijjar called his family. “Get dinner ready,” he said. “I’m coming home.” As he drove his truck toward the exit, however, a white sedan pulled up, blocking his way. Two hooded men approached on foot, drew handguns, and fired some fifty rounds into the driver’s-side door—shattering the glass, puncturing the metal, and piercing Nijjar’s arm, chest, and head. He died instantly. Canadian law enforcement suspected that the killing was the result of a plot orchestrated by the Indian government, whose history of violence against Sikh separatists stretches back four decades. For months, Canadian officials had been meeting regularly with Nijjar, warning him about potential threats to his life. U.S. intelligence agencies, too, had been monitoring the situation. And yet, just a few days after Nijjar’s death, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, was fêted by President Joe Biden, in a ceremony on the White House lawn. Some seven thousand people were in attendance, chanting Modi’s name. “The world order is taking a new shape,” he announced. About a week later, the Czech police, acting on U.S. intelligence, arrested a fifty-one-year-old Indian national named Nikhil Gupta, in the Prague airport. Gupta, the Department of Justice later claimed, had a history of international narcotics and weapons trafficking, and was involved not just in Nijjar’s murder but also in “an alleged plot, directed by an employee of the Indian government, to target and assassinate a U.S. citizen for his support of the Sikh separatist movement.” The citizen was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the friend Nijjar had phoned before his death. Gupta has pleaded not guilty, and his case is currently in pre-trial hearings in the Southern District of New York. The evidence that has been released thus far suggests an Indian-backed, transnational campaign of espionage and violence aimed at a handful of American and Canadian citizens. Authorities have begun to outline a spy network behind Nijjar’s killing that includes Gupta and his handler, Vikash Yadav—a former officer in India’s intelligence agency, known as the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW. The plot against Pannun was foiled by a U.S.-based sting team involving a government informant and a D.E.A. agent who had introduced themselves to Gupta as, respectively, a Colombian cocaine supplier and a hit man. Gupta had paid the fake hit man fifteen thousand dollars in cash, the first installment of what was ultimately intended to be a fee of a hundred thousand dollars. Court documents detail a phone call in which Gupta promises to provide the informant with planeloads of “production” and “toys” . They also note a seven-second video of Nijjar’s dead body, slumped in his truck, that had been circulated as proof of the assassination. In October, 2024, after negotiations with the U.S., Modi’s government agreed to break ties with Yadav, who is currently at large and wanted by the F.B.I. India, which has never acknowledged culpability for the killing, has portrayed Yadav as an independent actor, but a source close to Indian intelligence told me that one RAW officer privately characterized these denials as “total bullshit.” Another called the plot “a botched operation.” Court filings for Gupta’s trial indicate U.S. prosecutors will argue that India was directly involved in the attempt to assassinate Pannun, and that he was just one of several targets in a scheme to murder political activists in Canada, California, and New York. These individuals, fearing for their lives in India, had immigrated to North America decades ago and continued advocating for an independent Sikh state. A few minutes after Nijjar was shot, his son Balraj received a distress call from a family friend and raced to the gurdwara, sprinting through a crowd that had already grown to some two hundred people. “They were pulling at my clothes, my arms, as I ran,” he told me. In the center of the throng, already cordoned off with police tape, was Nijjar’s bloodstained pickup. “The second I saw it, I knew he had passed,” Balraj told me. “His last breath was for Khalistan, regardless of how many thousands of miles he was from home.” Sikhs currently constitute less than two per cent of India’s population. Since Partition, however, advocacy for an independent state has grown, funded in part by wealthy members of the diaspora and fuelled by a pattern of discrimination by the Indian government. The most striking instance came in 1984, after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her own bodyguards, who were Sikh; the ruling Indian National Congress helped to organize a retaliatory spasm of mob violence that killed thousands of Sikhs. In the aftermath, the state began to disappear members of the community. Such brutality has only encouraged resistance. Although Sikhism is built around tenets of oneness and divine love, a small group of militants have carried out a long campaign of violence. Before September 11, 2001, Sikh separatists held a bleak record for the deadliest act of aviation terrorism in history: in 1985, all three hundred and twenty-nine people on board Air India Flight 182, a passenger flight from Toronto to Delhi, were killed when a bomb in the cargo hold brought the plane down off the coast of Ireland. The cycle of violence and discrimination has only heightened since Modi came to power, in 2014. As the leader of the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party, he has spearheaded a ruthless Hindu-nationalist campaign that villainizes and assaults religious minorities. For a party that believes Hindus have a preëminent right to rule India, the Sikh separatist cause is a profound affront—especially when the calls for independence are made from Canada and the U.S. According to the source close to Indian intelligence, senior RAW officials hold a “skewed world view” that “everything is a conspiracy, that the West is out to get India,” and this paranoia played a large part in the recent assassination plots. On a recent visit, I was led in through a series of back hallways and patted down by two hulking guards. The main entrance stays locked, the lights in the waiting room off. Pannun, who met with me in a small conference room, was dressed soberly. “Since 2023, I’ve only worn black,” he said. “I’m only going to change that once we liberate Punjab.” He grew up in a village outside the city of Amritsar, the home of Sikhism’s holiest site, the Golden Temple. In 1984, Indian military forces invaded the gurdwara to capture Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh militant who was hiding inside. In the raid, known as Operation Blue Star, the army opened fire on Bhindranwale’s followers and civilians alike. Government documents put the death toll at a few hundred individuals, but independent reports suggest the figure exceeds four thousand. Pannun was seventeen at the time. “We could see the helicopters bombing, the shooting,” he said. “There was blood everywhere.” Fearing that the slaughter would touch off an insurrection, the government organized a campaign called Operation Woodrose, in which thousands of young Sikhs living in rural areas were detained and interrogated. “They were people I grew up with,” Pannun said. “I haven’t seen them since.” One young man he knew was tortured so viciously that his back was broken. At the time, Pannun was too young to be radicalized by the violence. “If I’d been older,” he told me, “I would have been advised that the right way to take on the Indian government is to pick up an AK-47.” It was only after a few years of college that he began to reflect on the Sikhs’ prospects for self-determination. “When did we have a chance?” he said. “When did we have a government to champion our own narrative?” Nowadays, he focusses on advocating for a separate Sikh state, in part through promoting a referendum in which residents of Punjab can vote on the issue. The probability of that happening is slim. In the state’s most recent legislative election, in 2022, the sole Sikh-nationalist party won just two per cent of the vote. To build awareness for the cause, Pannun helps coördinate activists back in India, whom he encourages to engage in various forms of dissent. One common action, he told me, is to “find a government building, find an Indian flag, and write ‘Khalistan Zindabad’ ”—Long Live Khalistan. India has designated Pannun as a terrorist, an accusation that he dismisses. “If you’re defending your own faith, then everybody is a terrorist,” he said. Still, he sometimes indulges in martial rhetoric. “I’m ready to face a bullet,” he told me. “My stake is my life, and my stake is what I’m going to do for the people who died fighting for my rights.” Though he speaks of himself as a martyr-in-waiting, the fact of the matter is that the young activists in Pannun’s network in Punjab take on most of the risk. Defacing flags and government buildings inevitably enrages local officials, and his workers, many of whom are paid recruits from poor rural areas—some as young as fifteen years old—have faced brutal retribution. Though Pannun denies encouraging any non-peaceful activism, he seems to view violence as a natural response to a state that brutalizes and oppresses Sikh nationalists. In September, 2023, three months after Nijjar’s murder, Justin Trudeau, then Canada’s Prime Minister, publicly accused the Indian government of involvement in it. The fallout between the two countries was swift—India suspended visas for all Canadian citizens, and both nations expelled the top-ranked diplomats from the other’s embassy. The response from the Biden Administration, following Gupta’s arrest, struck a very different tone. Though the U.S. possessed considerable evidence that the Indian government was likely involved in the plot on Pannun’s life, it chose to accept their version of events, namely that Yadav was a rogue officer acting on his own. Dan Stanton, who served more than three decades in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, believes that the disparity in responses can be explained in part by the significant role that Sikhs play in Canadian politics. “We’ve had Sikh Cabinet ministers, Defense Ministers, M.P.s—all of which annoys the Modi government greatly,” he told me. “It was very easy for the U.S., on the other hand, to just move forward.” Representative Judy Chu, of California, who founded the bipartisan American Sikh Congressional Caucus, told me, “There is not much sensitivity to the Sikh community” in Washington. In the past decade or so, the U.S. has viewed India as an important regional ally and bulwark against China, and this might also account for some of the Biden Administration’s reticence to confront Modi publicly. President Trump’s posture toward India has been harder to parse. This summer, he hit the country with a fifty-per-cent tariff—one of the highest imposed on any nation in the world—yet suggested last week that he would roll it back. A handful of scholars, including Sethi, argue that a guilty verdict for Gupta might provide the President with a negotiating chip to use in future dealings. Stanton is less certain. “It’s just par for the course with Donald Trump,” he said. “He’s a President who doesn’t read intelligence, doesn’t listen to intelligence, and deals with India whenever it comes up based on whatever mood he’s in. I think the furthest thing on his mind is transnational repression in the United States.” Just a few days after Trump imposed tariffs on India, Modi made a diplomatic trip to meet with the Chinese President, Xi Jinping. The visit was widely seen as a breach of trust, but Trump quickly dismissed the idea that there would be any repercussions. “I’ll always be friends with Modi—he’s great,” he said. “I just don’t like what he’s doing at this particular moment.” ♦
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