On a warm July night two years ago, Moninder Singh received a chilling message from special federal agents who showed up at his house in British Columbia: You are being formally warned that there is an imminent threat to your life. Avoid public spaces. Enhance security at home.
The first person he called — a friend and fellow activist in a campaign promoting an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India — had just gotten the same ominous warning.
A year later, that friend, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was dead.
Murder at the Temple
Mr. Nijjar was gunned down in June 2023 by masked men outside a Sikh temple he led in British Columbia. The Canadian government blamed the Indian government for the killing, setting off an extraordinary diplomatic rift.
Now, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadian law enforcement officials have painted an even darker picture: Mr. Nijjar’s assassination, they said, was part of a broader criminal campaign run by India that targeted Sikhs on Canadian soil and included harassment, intimidation, extortion, and the killing of at least one other person.
The campaign was orchestrated, officials said, by India’s ambassador in Canada and other diplomats out of the embassy in Ottawa and consulates in Toronto and Vancouver.
The Canadian authorities say that they will not release evidence linking individual cases to the Indian government because investigations are still underway.
However, a review of court records and interviews with local police officials uncovered new details of a surge in such crimes in Sikh communities over the past year, including at least a dozen alleged extortion episodes involving firearms and arson outside Toronto.
The spike began soon after Mr. Nijjar’s killing and Mr. Trudeau’s accusation in September 2023 that India was behind it, according to community leaders, court documents, and law enforcement officials familiar with the cases outside Toronto. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly while the investigation is underway.
Mr. Trudeau and the federal authorities said they had decided to issue a broad warning about criminal activity backed by India even without releasing evidence because of “a grave concern for our public safety.” Local authorities stated they could not link any cases examined to India, saying such evidence would need to come from intelligence agencies.
This month, citing the violence, Canada expelled India’s high commissioner, or ambassador, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and five other diplomats. India angrily denounced the accusations and expelled six Canadian diplomats.
Canada’s accusations have echoes of parallel events in the United States.
After Mr. Nijjar’s killing in Surrey, British Columbia, the F.B.I. last year charged an Indian government employee with plotting to assassinate a Sikh activist in New York. More recently, authorities charged an Indian intelligence officer in the same case.
The public accusations suggest that the United States and Canada are increasing their pressure on India — a longstanding partner — to rein in what they describe as state-sponsored violence within their borders.
Bad Blood
India has largely stamped out Sikh secessionist aspirations at home. Most Sikhs who support the creation of an independent enclave they call Khalistan live overseas, with Canada home to the largest Sikh diaspora.
Approximately 800,000 Sikhs are concentrated in British Columbia and Ontario, making up about 2 percent of Canada’s population.
Most are not involved in the Khalistan movement, but those who are say life in Canada has been punctuated by violence and intimidation.
Mr. Singh, reeling from Mr. Nijjar’s killing, received several more warnings of imminent risk to his life from Canadian authorities. Three other Sikh activists from their temple had also received initial warnings two years ago, Mr. Singh said.
They were all instantly certain where the threat was originating.
“I felt this was India trying to silence us, to either actually physically eliminate us or scare us into sitting at home and stepping away from the movement,” Mr. Singh said.
He emphasized, “I know I’d rather die than let that happen. Hardeep Singh proved his conviction by sacrificing his life.”
However, Mr. Singh did temporarily move out of his home to protect his family.
India has called Canada’s accusations “preposterous.” The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims that Mr. Trudeau is pandering to Canada’s Sikhs because they are an important voting bloc for his party, the Liberals.
India has long believed that Canada has not done enough to root out what it considers Sikh extremism.
Sikh nationalists were implicated in Canada’s deadliest terrorist act: a 1985 suitcase bombing of an Air India flight from Montreal to India via London that killed all 329 on board. Twenty years later, a judge acquitted two Indian-born Sikh nationalists who lived in Canada of murder charges. A third man had earlier pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
One of the men acquitted in the Air India case, Ripudaman Singh Malik, was killed in 2022 in Canada, and this week two men pleaded guilty to his murder.
Vincent Rigby, a former national security and intelligence adviser to Mr. Trudeau, noted that the rift between Canada and India dated back to the bombing.
The Indian government believes that “the Canadian government did not do enough to prevent that, and the Indians have repeatedly said to Canada over the last 40 years: You’ve got to do more,” said Mr. Rigby, who was also a senior official at the public safety, foreign, and defense departments before his retirement.
“Their mindset has been: ‘We told you to up your game with respect to Sikh extremism, to do more to address this issue. You haven’t done it,’” he added.
Today, the pro-Khalistan movement is involved in organizing “referendums” among the diaspora in favor of an independent Sikh homeland, protesting India’s government, and disseminating pro-Khalistan information. Canada has designated one pro-Khalistan entity as a terrorist organization.
Indian officials have repeatedly pointed out that the Canadian authorities have not presented concrete evidence supporting its accusations against their government.
Bullets With a Message
A review of more than 100 pages of court documents reveals arrests and details charges in and near Brampton — a city with a large Sikh community close to Toronto — in episodes targeting Sikhs and their businesses over the past year.
The documents paint a picture of threats and violence committed by perpetrators working in groups.
Among the cases: A car dealership was shot up; a Sikh-owned restaurant was doused with gasoline and set on fire; businesspeople received calls demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars and threatening harm to them or their families.
By the end of last year, a regional police force set up a special task force focused on extortion and other violent organized crime targeting Sikhs.
Sikh community leaders and law enforcement officials believe the violence in Brampton and Surrey was meant to sow fear and suspicion.
Last December, Jiwan Sidhu and his brother, who co-own a car dealership in Brampton, began receiving calls from a man speaking Punjabi. The caller demanded that they transfer 200,000 Canadian dollars ($144,000) into a bank account or face physical harm.
They dismissed the calls as a prank and decided not to pay, but the calls made his brother nervous.
Fifteen years earlier, the siblings had moved from India to Canada, becoming Canadian citizens and building up their business. Mr. Sidhu stated that neither he nor his brother has links to the Khalistan movement.
One morning after receiving the threatening phone call, Mr. Sidhu had an unexpected conversation with his brother. “If anything happens to me, look after my family please and don’t worry about the business,” his brother told him.
Mr. Sidhu was trying to reassure him when he suddenly felt something hard under his shoe as he walked along the dealership’s parking lot. It was a bullet. Then another one.
He walked up to five Wrangler jeeps lined up for sale and realized the tires were flat. When police arrived, they found 32 bullets and 12 damaged vehicles. CCTV footage reviewed revealed three hooded men entering the parking lot and shooting at the tires before calmly leaving.
Mr. Sidhu noted that authorities had not indicated whether the targeting of his business was anything more than thuggery, nor did they suggest it was linked to the Indian government.
Ruby Sahota, a member of Parliament representing northern Brampton and chief whip of the Liberal government, stated that her constituents began reporting such incidents late last year.
Ms. Sahota expressed that the campaign of violence was particularly disturbing because the perpetrators often filmed themselves and posted the videos.
“The videos were meant to be circulated online,” she said, “and create this complete feeling of terror.”