Nijjar killed in gang war kind of op, says report

Tribune News Service

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, September 27

While withholding specific information from India on the grounds of the ongoing police investigations, a purported video of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s murder, now available with a US newspaper, shows it was a larger and more complex operation than was suggested earlier by the Canadian authorities.

The video that The Washington Post claims is authentic shows six men and two getaway cars in the killing of Nijjar outside a gurdwara in Canada’s British Columbia on June 18. First a white sedan drew up alongside Nijjar’s pickup truck and then moved forward to cut its path. As soon as the sedan brakes to a stop, two men in hoodies but visibly bearded jumped out and fired at least 50 shots at Nijjar. Meanwhile, a white car drives out of the parking lot, according to the footage. Witnesses said the two men who fired at Nijjar were masked, of average height and had “pagdis” visible beneath their hoodies. According to the Post, a witness, Bhupinderjit Singh, was playing football about 100 yards away and first thought fireworks had gone off. On realising that shots had been fired, he jumped into a truck driven by a gurdwara leader, Gurmeet Singh Toor, and tried to give chase.

By then the two killers ran to a second vehicle, a 2008 Toyota Camry, in which three men were waiting for them. Meanwhile, the sedan in which the two killers had come drives away. This suggests the involvement of at least six people.

The Post was also told that the police took between 12 and 20 minutes to arrive at the scene and later a row broke out between the Surrey district police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police over jurisdiction issues. People at the gurdwara said it took the police over a month to put out a notice asking the public for help to identify a 2008 silver Toyota Camry.

The authorities in their earlier leaks had not talked about the white sedan and had suggested only three men were involved in the killing,