A member of the gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, where local Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was president before he was shot and killed in June, said police warned him last month of a threat to his life. life.
Gurmeet Toor, who said he was a close friend of Mr. Nijjar, said he was surprised when two police officers knocked on his door at around 11:30 p.m. on August 24 to give him a “duty to warn” letter stating that his life could be in danger.
“I was thinking, ‘What have I done? “I asked who was behind the threat, and they said they couldn’t answer that question,” Mr. Toor said in Punjabi.
Mr. Toor is a member of the management committee of the same Sikh temple where Mr. Nijjar was shot and campaigned in the unofficial referendum on Khalistan, a separate homeland that some Sikhs want to separate from India’s Punjab province.
Police advised Mr. Toor to be careful, avoid gatherings and move to a safer location, but they would not provide details about the threat, he told La Canadian Press.
The warning came weeks before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Sept. 18 announcement that Canadian intelligence services were investigating “credible” information about “a potential link” between Mr. Nijjar’s assassination. and the Indian government.
India, which had issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Nijjar over his advocacy for a separate Sikh state, has refuted the accusations against him, calling them “absurd and politically motivated.”
Mr. Toor said the youngest of his three children was living elsewhere after B.C.’s Ministry of Children advised him to do so following the police visit.
“It’s hard that one of our children was taken from us,” he said.
But Mr Toor said he had decided not to live in fear.
” I did not do anything wrong. I am a hard-working taxpayer, community volunteer, small business owner. I’m just talking about Sikh sovereignty,” Mr. Toor said of his campaign work during the Khalistan referendum.
Mr Nijjar had helped organize the referendum before his death.
A statement attributed to Mr. Toor and released by the group Sikhs for Justice said he asked if the police officers who had warned him of the threat to his life could provide him with a bulletproof vest, but they said they could. would be illegal.
“The police told me that the fact that they came to see me at that time of night should be taken as an indication that the (threat) was really serious,” it reads.
Mr Toor said he believed two other members of Surrey’s Sikh community had also received “duty to warn” letters, but he declined to provide details.
In July, Mr. Toor joined community members, including Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s son, for a virtual meeting with then-Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and two Surrey Liberal MPs to share their concerns about the possibility that the Indian government was involved in the killing, he said.
He said he has since participated in three other meetings, including with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Integrated National Security Teams, led by the RCMP.
Mr. Toor argued that Mr. Trudeau’s explosive statement about possible Indian involvement in Mr. Nijjar’s killing should lead to the expulsion of the Indian high commissioner to Canada.
He said he joined the Sikhs for Justice group this week to formally make the request in a letter to Mr. Trudeau and all federal political leaders.