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Who is Inderjeet Gosal? Man at the centre of Canada's Hindu temple attack
Inderjeet Gosal replaced Hardeep Singh Nijjar as SFJ's main Canadian organiser after the latter was murdered in June last year.
Canadian police arrested a 35-year-old Inderjeet Gosal in connection with the violent attack at a Hindu temple in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) last week.
The Peel Regional Police (PRP), however, released Gosal under conditions, directing him to appear before the Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton at a later date.
The incident - which took place at the Hindu Sabha Mandir in Brampton on November 3 - saw Khalistani extremists violently attacking Hindu-Canadian devotees. The PRP took action when the demonstrations, involving flags and banners, swiftly turned into physical assault, a statement from the police said.
At the centre of this whole incident sits Inderjeet Gosal, a coordinator for the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a group which is banned in India. Officials say Gosal is the principal organiser of the so-called Khalistan referendum in Canada and has been charged in connection with the attack on the Hindu temple in Brampton last week.
What do we know about Inderjeet Gosal
- Inderjeet Gosal replaced Hardeep Singh Nijjar as Sikhs for Justice's main Canadian organizer after the latter was gunned down in British Columbia in June 2023. He is considered to be the lieutenant of SJF's general counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is designated a terrorist by India.
- The Canadian police had said that Gosal was among the 13 citizens of the country who were targets of criminal violence aimed at pro-Khalistan elements. Pannun had said that the police in the Ontario province -- working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- had issued a "duty to warn" notice to Gosal.
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- SFJ, meanwhile, claimed that Gosal was targeted during a pro-Khalistan protest against the Hindu temple in Brampton, which was hosting a consular camp at the time. Indian officials from the Consulate in Toronto were present on the premises during this time.
- Last month, Gosal had said that he was not afraid of dying if it was for the establishment of an independent homeland for Sikhs in Punjab. "I know what I signed up for, death doesn't scare me," a committed Gosal was quoted as saying by The Financial Times.
- The demand for an independent Sikh state -- Khalistan -- goes back to the independence movement. The movement gained further boost after anti-Sikh killings took place following former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. Gosal and others like him reportedly term this as a "genocide", which forced thousands of Sikhs to flee their homeland and made many of them move to Canada.
Notably, on top of the ongoing diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Ottawa, the attack on the Hindu temple further escalated tensions in the country. Several political leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, condemned the attack. MP Chandra Arya had said, "Our country's leaders have failed to protect Hindus".
The Indian High Commission in Canada condemned the "violent disruption" by anti-India elements outside a consular camp.
