Hardeep Nijjar, designated terrorist and Khalistan supporter, shot dead in Canada

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in the Punjabi-dominated Surrey city of British Columbia province.

Updated on: Jun 19, 2023, 10:54:53 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a designated terrorist and Khalistan supporter, was shot dead at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in the Punjabi-dominated Surrey city of British Columbia province in Canada.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was the chief of Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF),

Nijjar was currently wanted in at least four NIA cases pertaining to Sikh radicalism, including a conspiracy to kill a Hindu priest at Phillaur in Punjab. The NIA also declared Rs10 lakh cash reward on him in July.

Nijjar, the chief of a pro-Khalistani outfit Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), was responsible for promoting the secessionist and terror agenda of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun-run ‘Sikhs for Justice’ (SFJ). It was after he established himself as a rogue element involved in terror activities in India, Pannun appointed him his separatist organisation SFJ’s representative in Canada tasking him with promoting the ‘Referendum-2020 campaign’.

Even though he claimed to be earning a livelihood by doing "hard work as a

plumber", the fact is he forcibly occupied Surrey’s Guru Nanak Sikh temple to become its president. In the last couple of years, he was regularly seen as part of protests in front of the Consulate General of India, Vancouver.

Najjar became friendly with people like separatist Moninder Boyle, an educated Canada-born Sikh. Boyle, till recently, was the president of another gurdwara in Surrey – Sri Dashmesh Darbar.

Both the gurdwaras – Guru Nanak Sikh Temple and Sri Dashmesh Darbar – are allegedly known for promoting anti-India Khalistani elements.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More