By Ryan Patrick Jones
July 7 (Reuters) - The United States has charged Lawrence Bishnoi, the imprisoned head of an Indian criminal gang, and his North American deputy with directing the 2023 murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, which plunged relations between Ottawa and New Delhi into crisis.
A federal indictment unsealed in Los Angeles alleges Bishnoi and Satinderjeet Singh, also known as "Goldy Brar," ordered the shooting of Nijjar outside a Sikh temple in the Vancouver
suburb of Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023.
The indictment says Bishnoi directed the operation from an Indian jail cell using smuggled cellphones and provided a co-conspirator with a photograph and multiple addresses of Nijjar's to facilitate the killing. Singh, a childhood friend of Bishnoi, allegedly directed the North American operations of the criminal group, known as the "Lawrence Bishnoi Organized Crime Group."
Nijjar's killing triggered a diplomatic crisis after then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said months later that Canadian authorities were "actively pursuing credible allegations" linking Indian government agents to the murder. New Delhi rejected the claim as absurd.
The U.S. indictment charging Bishnoi and Singh does not allege any Indian government role in the killing.
Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, had campaigned for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India, and had been designated a terrorist by New Delhi.
Neither First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli nor any other official at a press conference in Los Angeles alleged that the Indian government was involved in or aware of the killing.
The charges against Bishnoi and Singh were part of a broader investigation by U.S. and Canadian authorities that charged 37 defendants tied to three India-based organized crime groups with racketeering, extortion and drug trafficking, 24 of whom were arrested or already in custody, authorities said.
Canadian police in May 2024 arrested and charged four Indian nationals over Nijjar's killing, and have said they were probing whether the men had ties to the Indian government. The U.S. indictment does not name the alleged shooters as defendants, referring to them only as co-conspirators.
Relations between Ottawa and New Delhi have thawed under Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who visited India in February on his first official trip and opened talks on a trade deal expected to be completed by November.
His approach has drawn criticism from some Sikh groups, who accuse Ottawa of failing to hold India accountable or safeguard Sikh Canadians from foreign interference and transnational repression.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto; Additional reporting by Andrew Goudsward in Washington; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
