‘I can believe that India could do it’: Former B.C. premier on local Sikh leader’s murder

Ujjal Dosanjh, who led the province as a New Democrat between 2000 and 2001, said India was a different place when he grew up there than it is under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A former B.C. premier and federal health minister calls allegations that India is behind the June killing of a prominent Sikh leader in Surrey, B.C., “incredible,” but not entirely out of the question.

Ujjal Dosanjh, who led the province as a New Democrat between 2000 and 2001, said India was a different place when he grew up there than it is under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been in power there since 2014.

“If you want to portray yourself as Macho Modi, as he has been doing across the world, then I believe that India could do it,” Dosanjh told Global News on Tuesday.

“I would never have believed that Mr. Nijjar was such a threat to India that India had to come across international borders to kill him, but if it did, that’s absolutely despicable.”

On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stunned the Canadian public with news that national security authorities had “credible” intelligence suggesting “agents of the government of India” were involved in the June 18 shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara and a prominent supporter of Sikh separatism.

Within hours, India’s Ministry of External Affairs rejected the claim, calling it “absurd and motivated.”

Both Canada and India have now expelled select diplomats from each other’s nations, with trade talks cut off and a planned trade mission to India next month postponed.  Trudeau has called for India’s co-operation in the investigation into Nijjar’s murder, stating that Canada will “remain calm.”

“We are not looking to provoke or escalate. We are simply laying out the facts as we understand them and we want to work with the government of India,” Trudeau said Tuesday.