2024-11-18
31 分钟A killing in a Canadian suburb has provoked an astonishing diplomatic breakdown between India and Canada. Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus
This is the Guardian today.
Assassins, spies, and a superpower on the rise.
The rift between Canada and India.
On June 18 last year, Hardeep Singh Najar was at his local Gurdwara, the sea temple he attended.
It was Father's Day, and his two sons had called him earlier to say that there was pizza and his favorite Indian pudding waiting for him at home.
When he arrived that morning, they'd given him a new pair of jeans as a present.
Hannah Ellis Peterson, the Guardian's South Asia correspondent, has been covering his story.
Nijjar ran a plumbing business in Surrey, a suburban city near Vancouver in Canada.
But he was born and brought up in India, and there he'd been involved in a movement to create an independent Sikh homeland, a movement that India bans.
So Nijjar was very active in the Gurdwara.
He was the president there.
And that day, he'd made his weekly speech to the congregation where he spoke of the threats faced by the Sikh community around the world.
And he urged people to face them not with violence, but with activism.
So, you know, he told them, we do not need to grab AK47s.
We need to come together and demand our freedom.
So that evening, Nijar left the Gurdwara.
He was chatting with a friend, and as he was heading towards his pickup truck, shots ran out across the car park.
The window of his truck was shattered, and there were two bullets lodged in his car door.
Nijhar was left bleeding on the ground.
He'd been hit in the chest, in the head, and in the arms.