By Asia Samachar | Canada |
The four men accused of assassinating Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on the grounds of his suburban Vancouver gurdwara last year remain a long way from having a trial date set for the alleged murder, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has linked to Indian government agents.
In a brief appearance at Surrey Provincial Court Tuesday, the judge heard that Crown prosecutors have only begun the painstaking work of vetting and handing over massive amounts of digital evidence to the lawyers for the four men, who are accused of ambushing and killing Nijjar on Father’s Day last year, reports The Globe and Mail.
The Indian government has been dragged into this high-profile murder of the Canadian Sikh in a case that has potentially huge ramifications on India.
Evidence is mounting that the Indian government is orchestrating a widespread, coordinated assassination campaign against Sikh activists on foreign soil. Human Rights Watch warns these latest developments suggest “a new and notorious leap in extrajudicial killings” by India’s right-wing Hindu nationalist government, which has labeled Nijjar and other Sikh activists as terrorists over their criticisms of the state and their advocacy for the creation of a separate Sikh state in Punjab, India, known as Khalistan, reported Analyst News.
In the Canadian case, The Globe and Mail reported Crown prosecutor Louise Kenworthy said she and her team are “not at a point where I could say substantive disclosure has been completed” – referencing the legal requirement for the Crown across Canada to hand over all material in their possession relating to a criminal investigation and their case unless it is “clearly irrelevant” or subject to a claim of privilege. The judge then granted her request to adjourn the proceedings until the middle of next month.
But, since the co-accused were arrested and charged in May, Moninder Singh, a close friend of the slain leader, said at least two more Sikh activists have been notified by their local Canadian police that their lives were in danger.
Outside the courthouse Tuesday, Mr. Singh, who has also been subject to one of these “duty to warn” notices from officers, told reporters that those others were in addition to the August warning given to Brampton, Ont.-based activist Inderjeet Singh Gosal, bringing the number of Sikh Canadian activists facing such danger to at least seven in recent years.
“Some are actually quiet about it. They’re not coming forward to say that they’ve been given a duty to warn for their own reasons, for their own safety and how they want to deal with it,” Mr. Singh was quoted by the report. “There’s just a couple that I’ve been made aware of and, for us, even one is too much at the end of the day.”
The four accused, all Indian citizens, are alleged to have plotted to kill Mr. Nijjar from as far away as Edmonton and then to have driven to Surrey, B.C., to shoot the Sikh leader in the parking lot of a temple, sparking an international furor, according to the report.
Mr. Nijjar’s death enraged the Sikh community in Canada, especially after Mr. Trudeau stood in the House of Commons last September and stated that Canada’s spy agency had found evidence linking India to the daylight slaying. Sikh activists had always maintained that India orchestrated his killing because of Mr. Nijjar’s leadership in promoting the creation of an independent Sikh state, called Khalistan, that would be carved out from the South Asian country.
The Indian government has dismissed Mr. Trudeau’s claims, and the resulting diplomatic crisis has affected everything from trade to tourism with the most populous country in the world, the report added.
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