Canada Investigates Link Between Indian Government and Death of Sikh Activist Transcript

In Canada tonight, expelling a top Indian diplomat as it looks into what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls credible allegations that India’s government had something to do with the killing of a Sikh activist.

Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

So this activist fought for an independent Sikh homeland in India. He was gunned down in his truck in June, outside a temple in British Columbia. I want to bring in Meagan Fitzgerald, who’s been following this for us. What do we know, Meagan, about these allegations and where they came from?

Well Yasmin, first, good to be with you. And look, this is something that is just developing right now. The news just broke hours ago from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who basically said that, look, this is an investigation that’s been going on for several weeks. That Canada has been working closely with its allies around these allegations that Indian government agents were behind the killing of this Sikh leader outside of this temple, which is just outside of Vancouver in British Columbia. To give you some background here, the supporter was a strong supporter of this idea of having a Sikh homeland. This is something that India has banned. These types of groups are banned in India and is something that the Indian government calls a threat to their national security. Now, Justin Trudeau and speaking directly to the Canadian people today said that he had a direct conversation with the Prime Minister of India Modi, at the G20 last week. And I want you to listen to a little bit of what he had to say.

Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.

He also continued, and I want to read for you, he said, “In the strongest possible terms, I continued to urge the government of India to cooperate with Canada to get to the bottom of this matter.” So there’s a lot of questions here, a lot that we don’t know, but of course this is a developing story and one that we will most certainly be on top of and watching closely.