Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with Home Minister Amit Shah, in Ahmedabad, India, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki).
Fourteen shots were fired at a house near Victoria. A building in Edmonton was burned by arsonists using red sheets. A 39-year-old man has been found dead in a duplex in Winnipeg.
These crimes are among several across Canada that are alleged to be part of the Indian government’s campaign against activists and opponents of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Six diplomatic and consular officials working at India’s foreign missions in Ottawa and its consulates in Toronto and Vancouver have been identified as persons of interest in the scheme.
Monday, The Canadian government expelled them For their alleged role in crimes that mainly targeted members of the Khalistan movement that supports the independence of India’s Sikh-majority Punjab province.
But Global News has learned that police have evidence that the operation goes to the top: Amit Shah, the right-hand man of Modi, India’s second most powerful politician, allegedly approved it.
“I think there’s no doubt that all of this was coming from the top,” said Dan Stanton, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service officer.
“I mean who would continue this, especially implicating missions here in Canada without knowing it was backed from above?”
“I think a rogue is highly unlikely.”
He recalled that Modi said in a speech in May: “This is the new India. The new India is coming to your home to kill you.”
The RCMP took an unusual step Monday Canadians warned regarding India’s suspected involvement in “serious criminal activity in Canada”.
The agents, operating from the Indian consulates and the High Commission in Ottawa, are using blackmail and money to force individuals to carry out assignments for them, sources said.
Typically, members of the South Asian community are denied visas to return to India unless they do what they are told.
The jobs they were given included spying on individuals and Sikh organizations and relaying information to those working in Indian diplomatic missions.
That intelligence was then sent to India and used to target Khalistan activists and others opposed to the Modi government.
Organized crime groups based in India have been exploited to carry out a range of attacks on targets in Canada, from arson and drive-by shootings to murders.
“Despite law enforcement actions, damage continues, posing a serious threat to our public safety,” the RCMP said in its statement.
“We have reached a point where we felt it necessary to confront the Indian government and inform the public of some very serious findings that have been uncovered through our investigations.”
RCMP did not list “multiple ongoing investigations” linked to the scheme, but Global News confirmed some in cities across the country.
Among them are a series of racketeering and arson attacks in Edmonton that police are investigating under that name Gaslight projectand the killing of Sukhdol Singh Gill in Winnipeg on September 20, 2023.
Other incidents include the September 2 shooting at the home of a Punjabi singer in Colwood, British Columbia, and a similar drive-by shooting in Brampton, Ontario, in February.
Inderjit Singh Gosal, a pro-Khalistan activist in Brampton, Ontario, said police warned him his life was in danger.
charity
The Brampton house belongs to Inderjit Singh Gosal, a Canadian Sikh activist organizing a referendum on Khalistan independence.
He took over the position after his predecessor Hardeep Singh Nijar was shot dead outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple in Surrey, British Columbia on June 18, 2023.
Four suspects were arrested in Alberta and Ontario in May. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau linked the killing to the Indian government. Police visited Gosal in August to warn him that his life was also in danger.
In an interview, Gosal said that the shooting at his house and the threat to his life were “100 percent” part of the Indian government’s operation and that investigators had told him so.
“That’s exactly what they were telling me,” he said. He said investigators provided him with “a lot” of information about the communications, but he was unable to discuss the details publicly.
“Obviously the RCMP and CSIS have told me that yes, they are directly coordinating this,” he said when asked if his case was among those linked to Indian government agents in Canada.
He pointed out that the response on social media to what happened to him also confirmed the political nature of the crimes. “They’re saying, ‘Yes, that was a message, we’re sending you a message.’
“What makes me happy is that the truth is coming out. It shows the real background of India, their real side.” It really hurts them because it shows their true colours.
“It goes straight to Modi’s right hand.”
Shah, a Hindu nationalist, is close to Modi and helped secure the 2014 election victory that brought him and his Bharatiya Janata Party to power.
Shah was serving as Home Minister of Gujarat state when he was arrested in 2010 on charges of kidnapping and killing a Muslim couple.
He denied it, and after three months in custody, he was acquitted in 2014, rising through the ranks of the BJP alongside Modi.
He has become Modi Minister of Interior In 2019, he was assigned responsibility for internal security. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s website credits him with reducing incidents of terrorism to “isolated incidents.”
According to his profile on the BJP website, Shah “views weak and lumpy security as a major obstacle to the development of society, country and state.”
But he also allegedly signed off on the operation targeting pro-Khalistan activists in Canada, even as India denies the accusations.
In a statement The Indian government said on Monday that it “strongly rejects these preposterous accusations and attributes them to the Trudeau government’s political agenda centered around vote bank politics.”
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
