Canadian police have arrested members of an alleged hit squad investigators believe was tasked by the government of India with killing prominent Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C. last June,
Sources close to the investigation also told that police are actively investigating possible links to three additional murders in Canada, including the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy in Edmonton.
Members of the hit squad are alleged to have played different roles as shooters, drivers and spotters on the day Nijjar was killed at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, according to the sources.
Sources said investigators identified the alleged hit squad members in Canada some months ago and have been keeping them under tight surveillance.
Kamalpreet Singh, Karanpreet Singh and Karan Brar face first-degree murder and conspiracy charges in the Nijjar case, according to documents filed in a Surrey court Friday. The charges have not been tested in court.
Although sources initially told CBC News that raids were expected in at least two provinces, RCMP confirmed Friday that all three men were arrested separately in Edmonton without incident — two of them in their homes and another elsewhere.
‘This investigation does not end here,’ says RCMP officer
All of the accused are Indian citizens and have been non-permanent residents of Canada for three to five years, RCMP officers told reporters at their Friday press conference announcing the charges.
Sources told the men arrived in Canada on temporary visas after 2021, some of them student visas. None are believed to have pursued education while in Canada. None have obtained permanent residency.
Others tied to this crime could be arrested in the coming days, police said.
“This investigation does not end here. We are aware that others may have played a role in this homicide and we remain dedicated to finding and arresting each one of these individuals,” said Supt. Mandeep Mooker, the officer in charge of the B.C. RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT).
Moninder Singh, Bhupinder Singh Hoti and a family member — relatives and friends of the late Hardeep Singh Nijjar — walk into the RCMP ‘E’ division headquarters in Surrey, B.C., on Friday. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Assistant Commissioner David Teboul, the RCMP commander for the Pacific region, said he wouldn’t comment on the alleged links between these men and Indian officials.
He did say the force is “investigating connections to the government of India.”
But Teboul said the force’s relationship with Indian police has been “rather challenging and difficult.”
Asked if there are any Indian “sleeper agents” in Canada, Teboul said it’s a “great question” but he can’t say more about it because it’s “very much at the centre of evidence and ongoing investigations.”
WATCH: RCMP calls collaboration with partner agencies in India ‘rather challenging’
RCMP calls collaboration with partner agencies in India ‘rather challenging’
2 hours ago
Duration 1:06
RCMP Assistant Commissioner David Teboul says police have been collaborating and communicating with partner agencies in India but it has been ‘difficult for the last several years.’
learned of the arrests — as well as other information that was not announced by police on Friday — through extensive discussions with senior investigative and government sources, as well as members of the Sikh community.
The investigative and government sources spoke with CBC News on the condition that they not be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. The sources in the Sikh community expressed concerns about their personal security, so CBC News is not disclosing their identities.
Shifting responses from India
Nijjar, a 45-year-old Canadian citizen, was shot dead on June 18, shortly after evening prayers at his Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., in what appeared to be a highly coordinated attack, according to video of the incident obtained by CBC’s The Fifth Estate.
WATCH | The Fifth Estate shows how the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar was carried out
Exclusive surveillance video of the targeted killing of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18, 2023.
2 months ago
Duration 1:22
The Fifth Estate shows how the killing of a Sikh Canadian activist was carried out, allegedly by agents of the government of India.
Last August, Canadian officials told representatives of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in person that Canada had intelligence linking it to Nijjar’s killing.
A month later — on Sept. 18, 2023, not long after returning from a fraught visit to India for the G20 Summit — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rose in the House of Commons to state that “Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India” and Nijjar’s killing.
IHIT Superintendent Mandeep Mooker speaks during a press conference announcing the arrest of 3 individuals related to the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar at RCMP ‘E’ division headquarters in Surrey, B.C., on Friday May 3, 2024. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” he added.
Modi’s government has denied it ordered extrajudicial killings in the U.S. and Canada. Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar initially decried the Canadian allegation as “absurd” and accused Canada of harbouring violent extremists.
WATCH | Trudeau links Indian government to fatal shooting in Canada
Trudeau says ‘credible allegations’ link India to killing of Sikh leader in Canada
8 months ago
Duration 2:47
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says any foreign government involvement in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is ‘an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.’
The minister’s tone at a Sept. 27, 2023 speaking event was somewhat less confrontational. Jaishankar said at that time that “we told the Canadians that this is not the government of India’s policy.”
In December, after a U.S. indictment accused an unnamed Indian government employee of playing a role in a murder-for-hire plot in the U.S., Jaishankar issued another statement.
“We have always maintained that if any country, not just Canada, has a concern and gives us some input or some basis for that concern, we are always open to look at it,” he said.
Bloomberg reported in March that the Indian government had given the U.S. a report in which it acknowledged that Indian agents were involved in the U.S. murder plot, but claimed they were rogue operatives.
At this stage of Canada’s investigation, investigators are reluctant to expand on any possible connections between Nijjar’s alleged killers and Indian government officials.
However, during a roundtable with Canadian Punjabi media on Sunday, Trudeau said the work by intelligence and police agencies was ongoing.
“It is very good and rigorous work. And when the time comes for them to conclude that investigation, there will be some very, very clear things that everyone around the world, including in India, will see as to responsibilities and involvement,” he said.
Shot dead a day after being listed in India
Just two days after Trudeau’s bombshell statement in the House — on Sept. 20, 2023 — Sukhdool Singh Gill, 39, of Winnipeg was found shot to death in a duplex in the city’s northwest. A neighbour told police he heard 11 shots.
Gill also went by the alias Sukha Duneke and allegedly was part of the Davinder Bambiha gang in India, according to police documents in that country. Indian media have reported that he fled to Canada in 2017 using a false passport.
Gill was one of Punjab’s most wanted men, accused of extortion and arranging money for gang members to buy weapons. Police in India have publicly linked him to murders and other serious crimes.
He was also on the radar of the government of India.
One day before his killing, Gill’s name and photo appeared on a list of 43 names of suspected terrorists drawn up by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), which linked him to the separatist Khalistan Tiger Force. India previously accused Nijjar of being part of the same organization.
The day after Gill died, the NIA tweeted an image of him along with other wanted men.
Sukhdool Singh Gill appeared on a wanted list released via the social media platform X by India’s National Investigation Agency — a specialized counter-terrorism law enforcement agency — on Sept. 21, 2023. Gill, 39, was found dead in a northwest Winnipeg home the same week. (NIA India/X)
Father and son slain together
Six weeks after Gill’s death, another alleged Indian gangland figure in another western province was shot dead in a brazen daylight attack that also claimed the life of his 11-year-old son.
Harpreet Uppal, a 41-year-old with links to organized crime, was shot dead in his vehicle in a busy suburban shopping area of Edmonton on Nov. 9, 2023. Two boys were in the vehicle, Uppal’s 11-year-old son, Gavin, and a friend.
The Edmonton Police Service later said the killers shot both father and son, while sparing the other boy. EPS Acting Superintendent Colin Derkson said Gavin “was not caught in a crossfire or killed by mistake.”
No one has been charged in the Gill or Uppal killings, and the sources told CBC News charges in connection to these cases are not expected to come Friday.
The Bishnoi gang
All of the men arrested Friday are alleged associates of a criminal group in Punjab and neighbouring Haryana state that is associated with notorious Punjabi gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, currently held in India’s high-security Sabarmati prison in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat, according to sources close to the investigation.
Bishnoi is accused by the Indian government of the shooting murder of Punjabi singer-politician Sidhu Moose Wala, a former resident of Brampton, Ont., in Punjab in May 2022, as well as drug smuggling and extortion.
Bishnoi was one of two jailed Indian gangsters who claimed responsibility on social media for Gill’s killing last September, describing it as revenge for a previous gangland killing in India, according to widespread Indian media reports.
India has long alleged that Punjabi gangsters are able to use Canada as a base to squeeze money from business owners and others in India, relying on an army of low-paid gunmen to act as collectors and enforcers back home.
According to both an unsealed U.S. federal indictment and Canadian investigators, the Indian government itself took advantage of those criminal networks to go after its enemies in Canada and the U.S. — enemies such as Nijjar and Khalistani activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, reportedly the target of an unsuccessful assassination plot in the U.S.
WATCH | U.S. indictment reveals alleged murder-for-hire plot linked to India
Who was Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the man India is accused of killing?
7 months ago
Duration 3:40
Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a pro-Khalistan activist and the president of a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C. His day job was working as a plumber. For years, the Indian government called him a terrorist — a claim Nijjar repeatedly denied. So, who was Nijjar, and why did India think he was such a danger?
Pannun was the key organizer behind a series of independence votes in the Sikh diaspora. While the votes had no legal effect, they reportedly infuriated the Modi government.
Nijjar was targeted by India because of his role in helping to organize the votes in Canada’s Sikh community, according to Canadian sources and the U.S. indictment.
Governments and gangsters
One source close to the investigation told CBC News Canada is seeing foreign governments, including India, make use of criminal elements to carry out international operations.
“Why risk sending Indian government people when you can get so much mileage using people from organized crime?” the investigator said.
But while the investigation is probing possible connections between Nijjar’s killing and the Gill and Uppal cases, investigators are not convinced the Indian government was involved in the latter two.
Investigators say the Edmonton and Winnipeg killings may have had more to do with gangland rivalries and vendettas.
The foiled hit in the U.S.
The U.S. indictment alleges an Indian government employee contracted a criminal to target enemies in North America.
On June 30, 2023, Czech authorities acting on a U.S. warrant arrested alleged Indian drug trafficker Nikhil “Nick” Gupta. On Nov. 30 he was indicted in the U.S. for allegedly helping an unnamed Indian government official hire a hitman to kill an unnamed Sikh independence activist in New York, reported to be Pannun, widely considered India’s number one target.
It was the Drug Enforcement Administration, rather than the FBI, that stumbled onto the U.S.-based conspiracy while investigating Gupta in a narcotics case.
Gupta didn’t know that the contact he asked to help him find a hitman was in fact a confidential informant of the DEA, the U.S. indictment alleges. Gupta has denied the charges and is facing extradition to the United States. He has not been tried.
The U.S. indictment also referred to Canadian cases. It alleged the unnamed Indian government employee told Gupta the Nijjar killing had accelerated the timetable for the assassination in New York — “It’s [a] priority now,” he allegedly texted.
Gupta allegedly sent his supposed contract killer a video of Nijjar’s body and told him to “do it quickly.”
The U.S. indictment says Gupta told the police informant in an audio call that they had “four jobs” to finish before June 29 — one in New York and “three in Canada.”
The publication of court documents in his case was one of a number of incidents that concerned Canadian investigators, who watched closely to see what effect the revelations might have on their own surveillance targets in Canada.
A uniquely sensitive time
While the prime minister and U.S. authorities have pointed the finger at the Indian government, Canadian investigators have struggled with the question of how high up the Indian chain of command they should pursue charges.
Investigators long ago dismissed the notion that India’s overseas assassination campaign is a rogue operation, as the Indian government has maintained.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, walks past Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as they take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Raj Ghat, Mahatma Gandhi’s cremation site, during the G20 Summit in New Delhi, Sept. 10, 2023. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
They say they believe that Indian officials would not dare to proceed with assassinations in Western countries without official sanction. As CBC News has previously reported, Canadian government sources say Canada has evidence of communications between Indian government officials in India and Canada collected in the course of their investigation.
The arrests come as Indians go to the polls in a national election that takes several weeks of voting to produce a result, expected on June 4. Modi is expected to win a third term in office.
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
