ZeroFox Intelligence Brief - India-Canada Tensions

Product Serial: B-2023-09-28a

TLP:CLEAR

In this intelligence brief, ZeroFox Geopolitical Working Group researchers provide an overview of recent tensions between India and Canada, in addition to possible short and long-term impacts of the tensions.

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Geopolitical and Physical GEO

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Executive Summary

The ZeroFox Geopolitical Working Group has been monitoring Indo-Canadian relations closely, which have deteriorated rapidly after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s September 18 announcement of an investigation into New Delhi’s possible involvement in the murder of a Canadian national. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a 45-year-old Sikh man born in India but residing in British Columbia with Canadian citizenship, was murdered in June by unknown gunmen as he sat in his parked pickup truck in Surrey, just outside Vancouver. Nijjar was the president of the Guru Nanak Gurdwara, a Sikh temple in Surrey. He also played an important role in the Canadian branch of Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a U.S.-based organization advocating for the secession of India’s Punjab state to form an independent Sikh nation called Khalistan. India declared SFJ a terrorist organization in 2019 and labeled Nijjar himself a terrorist in 2020. Before that, Indian authorities blamed Nijjar for a 2007 bombing in Punjab and accused him of running a terrorist training camp in Surrey.