New Delhi: “It was such a prolonged event that I’m actually surprised he survived so many years,” Kash Heed, a former Vancouver police chief and former solicitor general of British Columbia, said after the killing. by Ripudaman Singh Malik in 2022.

Malik was one of the two acquitted in 1985 Kanishka bombingwhich cost the lives of 329 people on board Air India Flight 182 connecting Montreal to Mumbai via London on June 23, 1985.

A report of News18 even cited intelligence sources suggesting the killing was carried out by Sikh separatists backed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.

Malik was found dead in his Tesla outside his family business in Surrey, British Columbia, with multiple gunshot wounds on July 14, 2022. Canadian police arrested two men in their early 20s, Tanner Fox and Jose Lopezwho pleaded guilty to the murder last month but have yet to reveal the name of who hired them to carry out the attack.

Less than a year after Malik’s murder, Nijjar, who reportedly once called him “Qaum Ka Gaddar,» (traitor to the community) for getting closer to the Indian authorities, was also killed in the same area of ​​Surrey as Malik.

Although Nijjar’s murder has become a diplomatic flashpoint between India and Canada, with Ottawa alleging New Delhi’s involvement, in her testimony before Canada’s foreign interference inquiry last month, former security adviser national, Jody Thomas, said the initial investigation suggested Nijjar was killed in retaliation for Malik’s murder.

“Nijjar’s murder was the second high-profile murder during the same period. gurdwara” Thomas said, adding that the “initial assumption” was that it was “retaliation” for Malik’s killing almost exactly a year earlier.

Thomas also said that Canadian authorities learned through “very good intelligence and police work” that “there was a high probability that this was an extrajudicial killing.”

India has disputed any clear link between its officials and Nijjar’s killing, saying Canada has yet to share any “evidence” with Indian authorities to support its claims.

Meanwhile, the US Justice Department’s indictment in the alleged plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal advisor to Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) – a group banned in India – mentions that Vikash Yadav, former Indian spy had sent a video of Nijjar’s body slumped in his car to co-defendant Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national currently incarcerated in a Brooklyn jail. Pannun, incidentally, was also Nijjar’s lawyer.

As Malik’s killers face sentencing in a Canadian court, ThePrint examines some questions about the high-profile murder: Did Sikh separatists want Malik dead? Was Nijjar behind the murder? And was Nijjar’s murder a retaliation for Malik’s murder?

Read also: ‘Air India ki Flight Mat Lo’: How Canadian negligence led to the Kanishka bombing 38 years ago

‘I’ll probably never know’ who ordered the attack

Malik’s family migrated from Lahore to Ferozepur, Punjab, just before Partition. He then moved to the United Kingdom and then Canada in the 1970s with his four sons and one daughter. During his time there, he founded the Khalsa Credit Union (KSU) and two charitable organizations, the Satnam Trust and the Satnam Education Society, which operated several Khalsa schools.

Its cThe clothing import company, Papillon Eastern Imports, was incorporated in 1975.

Former British Columbia premier Ujjal Dosanjh, who first met Malik in the 1970s, described him to the Vancouver Sunshine in 2022 as a “ganja-smoking hippie who had a ponytail” and later “transformed into an extremist warrior”.

Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez, the duo who shot Malik, had been conducting reconnaissance of his business the day before the killing. They fired at least seven shots at the 75-year-old man as he sat in his Tesla outside his business in Surrey’s Payal business center.

Fox and Lopez pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, despite evidence suggesting the killing was intentional but not premeditated. But investigators maintain that the two men are not saying who ordered the hit. According to the Canadian court’s agreed statement of facts, both shooters confessed to being hired to kill Malik, but investigators found no evidence to suggest who hired them to carry out the killing.

Lopez’s lawyer, Gloria Ng, said Global News last month, “What we know from the agreed statement of facts is that there was some sort of financial incentive that was involved in the commission of this crime, but in terms of other details, This is another one of those situations where unfortunately it’s just something that we, as outsiders, will probably never know.

Calling for those who ordered the hit to be brought to justice, Malik’s family argued that “the work (to stop those who ordered the hit) is not finished.”

“Tanner Fox and José Lopez were hired to commit this murder. Until those responsible for recruiting them and organizing this assassination are brought to justice, the work will remain incomplete,” the family said in a statement last month after both men pleaded guilty.

The Nijjar-Malik fight

Indian and foreign journalists, as well as Indian investigative agencies, suggested that Sikh separatists, including Nijjar, wanted Malik to leave the country because of his change in stance towards India, and that the murder was the result of differences that emerged over the years.

Malik obtained an Indian visa in 2019, after being removed from the blacklist of people banned from entering the country. Three years later, he wrote to Modi effusively congratulating him in a letter.

“I write this to express my sincere gratitude for the unprecedented positive steps you have taken to address long-standing Sikh demands and grievances, including the removal of blacklists that restricted the visit to India of thousands of Sikhs living abroad, the granting of passports and visas. to refugees and their families, reopening of hundreds of cases closed during the 1984 riots, leading to convictions and prison sentences for some, declaring the 1984 riots as “genocide” by the Minister of the Interior of At the time, Shri Rajnath Singh, in the House, awarding compensation or Rs. 5.00 lakh per family of victims of anti-Sikh genocide, opening of Sri Kartarpur Saheb corridor allowing Indian pilgrims to visit the revered place of our first Master Guru Nanak Dev Ji,” it read.

BJP national secretary Manjinder Singh Sirsa had at the time praised Malik, saying he “dared to express Sikh sentiments and spoke so honestly” while writing to Modi.

Malik’s visit to India in 2019, letter to Modi in 2022 as well as his decision to reject the demand for a separate homeland for Sikhs had led to palpable discord in Sikh separatist circles in Canada. He was also reportedly harassed by separatist groups upon his return from India.

For example, Malik had obtained permission to print copies of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib at his premises in Surrey from the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). But the move was opposed by Nijjar and his associates who launched a ‘rumour’ campaign against Malik, alleging that the Sri Guru Granth Sahib printed at the establishment contained errors. In a speech delivered in January 2021, Nijjar reportedly even called for social boycott in a speech delivered from the premises of Guru Nanak temple and asked people to teach Malik a lesson.

And in June 2022, Akal Takht jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh had to cancel a visit to Surrey after receiving gherao “threats” from a Sikh separatist group. This group also accused the jathedar in a letter of favoring Malik.

Malik had then called “anti-Indian elements” as “enemies of Sikhs”, alleging that they were working at the behest of foreign governments. He then accused Nijjar and his associate Moninder Boyle, former president of the Sri Dashmesh Darbar Gurdwara, of intimidating him.

Asked about Malik’s murder, Nijjar denied any role in the assassination, telling the Vancouver Sunshine in July 2022: “I was very shocked. He was a good personality in the community. A day later, Nijjar said Hindustan era that he had “no problem” with Malik.

However, days before being killed, Malik reportedly told journalist Sameer Kaushal: Radio Sher-E-Punjab“Control of gurdwaras in Canada is now in the hands of those who are undisciplined and do not care about Sikhs. Maryada (dignity)”. He also claimed that the same people had recognized Jagtar Hawara as the jathedar of the Akal Takht.

A former Babbar Khalsa activist, Hawara is incarcerated in Tihar jail after being convicted in 2007 for the 1995 assassination of then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh. In 2015, a Sarbat Khalsa organized by radical Sikh organizations in Amritsar, Punjab, had appointed Hawara jathedar of the Akal Takht – a move the SGPC refused to recognize.

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)

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