Slain Sikh leader met CSIS every week before killing linked to India: Son

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VANCOUVER — The son of Sikh community leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar said his father was meeting regularly with Canadian intelligence officers in the months before he was shot dead in British Columbia in a killing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said has been credibly linked to India.

Balraj Nijjar said in an interview that his father was meeting Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers “once or twice a week,” including one or two days before the June 18 killing, with another meeting scheduled for two days after his death.

Balraj said he also attended a meeting between his father and the RCMP last year, in which they were told about threats to his father’s life and he was advised to “stay at home.”

Hardeep — a vocal supporter of the Khalistan movement that advocates for a separate Sikh homeland in India’s Punjab state — was gunned down by two masked men in the parking lot of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., where he was president.

Trudeau announced to Parliament on Monday that intelligence services were investigating “credible” information about “a potential link” between India’s government and the killing.

India’s government has denied the accusation as “absurd and motivated.”

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a U.S.-based spokesperson for the group Sikhs for Justice and a close associate of Hardeep, said his late friend had asked Canadian authorities whether he should wear a bulletproof vest in the weeks before he was gunned down.

The New York-based lawyer said Hardeep asked about the vest in April or May and the agencies responded to the effect that they could not provide one.

Pannun said Hardeep had also told him a year earlier, around July 2022, that Canadian authorities had told him about a threat to his life.

He said they told Hardeep he shouldn’t go to his gurdwara at his usual times and he should avoid being seen in public.

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But Balraj said neither he nor his father wanted to hide.

“We weren’t worried about safety because we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were just using freedom of speech,” he said.

India had previously accused Hardeep of terrorism and separatism. He was a key proponent of Sikh independence and had been helping organize an unofficial referendum on Sikh independence in India.

Pannun said he believed Hardeep chose to go about his daily life despite the warnings from authorities because his campaigning in Canada was peaceful. “Since the Khalistan referendum is a peaceful and a democratic process and he is in Canada, where freedom of speech and expression is inherently a democratic, fundamental right,” he said.

A media officer for the RCMP in B.C. said a request for a response had been forwarded to national headquarters. CSIS did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.