The trial of four men accused in the killing of pro-Khalistan figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar is unlikely to start before late next year, with the pretrial process set to continue for several months.
“Trial dates haven’t yet been set, but pretrial applications are scheduled to commence in January 2026 and are expected to run through to the end of August 2026,” Damienne Darby, communications counsel for the British Columbia Prosecution Service, told HT.
The disclosure/pretrial phase at the New Westminster
The trial of four men accused in the killing of pro-Khalistan figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar is unlikely to start before late next year, with the pretrial process set to continue for several months.
“Trial dates haven’t yet been set, but pretrial applications are scheduled to commence in January 2026 and are expected to run through to the end of August 2026,” Damienne Darby, communications counsel for the British Columbia Prosecution Service, told HT.
The disclosure/pretrial phase at the New Westminster court in the province is underway and the next court appearance is on October 2, 2025, for a pretrial conference, Darby said in response to queries.
“An application screening conference has been scheduled for December 17, 2025, during which the parties will confirm which pretrial applications are proceeding and their estimated time,” she added.
The four accused, all Indian nationals, remain in custody under a detention order. A publication ban on the proceedings of the case is also in place.
The four accused — Karan Brar, Kamalpreet Singh, Karanpreet Singh and Amandeep Singh — are in holding facilities, the locations for which have not been disclosed.
The detention orders mean that they will remain there till the trial commences. A judge may review a bail application at a later date, but that may not be granted as they face serious charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Nijjar was killed on June 18, 2023, in Surrey, British Columbia. Three months later, then Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau stated in the House of Commons that there were “credible allegations” of a potential link between Indian agents and the murder. India described those charges as “absurd” and “motivated”.
More than a year later, on October 18, 2024, while testifying before the foreign interference committee in Ottawa, Trudeau said, “At that point, it was primarily intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof.”
Indian officials have continued to deny any involvement in the murder. With Trudeau’s departure as PM, some of the rancour has faded away, and India and Canada commenced a dialogue between law enforcement agencies this year prior to Canadian PM Mark Carney meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the margins of the G7 leaders’ summit in Kananaskis in June this year. The return of High Commissioner-designates to the respective capitals is another step forward.
But the case continues to be used by secessionist groups for their own agenda. On Thursday, a protest was organised by pro-Khalistan outfit Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) in front of the Indian Consulate General to mark the second anniversary of Trudeau’s statement in the House of Commons. Shouting separatist slogans, the demonstrators erected barriers blocking access to the office building housing the Consulate. SFJ had called for a 12-hour “siege” and the protest took place in the presence of local law enforcement.
Brar, Kamalpreet Singh and Karanpreet Singh were arrested from in and around Edmonton in May 2024. Amandeep Singh was charged days later while he was in custody of the Peel Regional Police (PRP). He was arrested in November 2023 on nine charges, including those related to unauthorised possession of a firearm and possession of a controlled substance.
In November last year, the prosecution, called the Crown, moved to stay proceedings in the provincial court and proceeded by way of a direct indictment before the province’s Supreme Court. A direct indictment means the accused will not have a preliminary inquiry but will instead proceed directly to trial. The fairly lengthy period of pretrial applications is due to the complexity of the case.
Amandeep Singh made his first court appearance on May 15, 2024, while the others appeared before a judge on May 7 last year. It was on May 21, 2024, that all four appeared together in a court for the first time. They face charges related to first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
The hearings for the accused at the provincial court, the latest on October 2, were adjourned five times, as the prosecution sought additional time for disclosure, or providing of the case material to the lawyers for the accused.
With the outcome of the case now only likely towards the end of the next year, at the earliest, it will continue to cast a shadow over the bilateral relationship that both sides are gradually attempting to reset.
There are voices that have called for a pragmatic approach towards the issue. In April this year, in a dispatch for the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, retired Canadian diplomat David McKinnon, who was stationed at Canada’s High Commission in New Delhi between 2004 and 2009, stressed, “While the Nijjar case cannot be ignored, this episode — however serious — should not dictate the entirety of our policy.”
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