World News: Reacting to the arrest of three accused in Canada in connection with the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday (May 4) said that India will wait for Canadian Police to share information on those ‘Indians’ arrested. This comes after the Canadian Police on Friday charged the three men over the murder of Nijjar and said that they were investigating if the suspects had links to the Indian government.
What did Jaishankar say on arrest of three Indians?
Jaishankar said that he had seen the news about the arrests made and added that they “apparently are Indians of some kind of gang background… We’ll have to wait for the police to tell us”.
“But, as I said, one of our concerns which we have been telling them is that, you know, they have allowed organised crime from India, specifically from Punjab, to operate in Canada,” Jaishankar added.
India’s high commissioner to Canada Sanjay Verma said that it hopes to get regular updates from the Canadian authorities regarding the three arrested Indians.
“I understand that the arrests have been made as a result of investigations conducted by the relevant Canadian law enforcement agencies. This issue is internal to Canada and therefore we have no comments to offer in this regard,” Verma said.
The three Indian nationals were arrested in the city of Edmonton in Alberta on Friday, the police said.
Nijjar, 45, was shot dead in June outside a gurdwara in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. A few months later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged Indian government involvement, stirring a diplomatic crisis with New Delhi.
Investigation still on, says Canadian Police
Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was shot dead by two unidentified men outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023. “The investigation does not end here. We are aware that there are others out there that played a role in this homicide and we remain dedicated to identifying and arresting each one of them,” Superintendent Mandeep Mooker, Officer in Charge of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) said.
Earlier, a purported video footage of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was designated a terrorist by the National Investigation Agency in 2020, surfaced online. In the video Nijjar is seen being shot by armed men in what has been described as a ‘contract killing’, Canada-based CBC News reported. The video showed Nijjar leaving the parking lot of the Gurdwara in his grey Dodge Ram pickup truck.
Sources said Canadian investigators identified the alleged hit squad members, who were arrested on Friday, in Canada some months ago and have been keeping them under tight surveillance. Police are expected to announce the arrests and share some details of their investigation later Friday, as per reports.
Police personnel have not given any evidence of any link to India as was being speculated in Canadian media, including the bombshell allegations made by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in September last year. India has repeatedly denied the allegations, terming them “absurd and motivated.”
(With Reuters inputs)
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