New Delhi: The United Kingdom was the first to provide the Canadian government with intelligence linking Indian agents to the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and to plots targeting two others in the United States and the United Kingdom, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and Avtar Singh Khanda, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, British intelligence shared a file with Canada in late July 2023 containing details of conversations intercepted by the UK’s signals intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

“It was a summary and analysis of conversations intercepted by the UK’s signals intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, between individuals whom British analysts believed were working on behalf of the Indian government,” the news agency said.

The intercepted conversations, which took place earlier in the year, allegedly discussed plans to target three individuals – Nijjar in Canada, Pannun in the United States and Khanda in the United Kingdom.

Nijjar was shot dead in his truck outside a gurdwara in western Canada in June 2023. Pannun was the target of an alleged murder-for-hire plot in New York, which US authorities said was foiled after they charged an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, accusing him of acting on the instructions of a former Indian intelligence officer, Vikas Yadav.

Khanda died in June 2023 after being admitted to a hospital, with the official cause of death listed as acute myeloid leukaemia, a form of blood cancer. Earlier this year, his family demanded an inquest after a pathologist noted that the postmortem findings “do not mean that a poisoning can be completely excluded”.

The file was reportedly hand-delivered by a UK official to a secure government facility in Ottawa under strict conditions set by London, Bloomberg said.

The document did not name Nijjar’s assassins or those whose communications were intercepted, “but British analysts concluded there was a strong likelihood that Nijjar had been murdered in an operation directed by the Indian state.”

Within an hour of receiving the British document, Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Adviser, Jody Thomas, briefed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the report added.

The report could shed new light on the intelligence trail behind Trudeau’s public accusation in September 2023 that Indian agents were involved in Nijjar’s killing. 

After Trudeau’s announcement, then United States ambassador to Canada David Cohen had told Canadian media that he could confirm that there was “shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners that helped lead Canada to making the statements that the prime minister made”. 

A year later, in October 2024, Trudeau said that Canada had received “credible intelligence” on the case from its partners in the Five Eyes alliance, without naming which country had provided the information. “We have been working with our allies over the past weeks and months to ensure that we get to the truth,” Trudeau said.

Canada has arrested four Indian nationals in connection with Nijjar’s killing, though their trial has yet to begin.

Nikhil Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic and later extradited to the United States last year. His trial, which was scheduled to begin this month, has been delayed after he once again changed his defence lawyer. US prosecutors have alleged that Gupta was aware Nijjar was also among the targets identified by former RAW officer Vikas Yadav, whose whereabouts remain unknown.

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