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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

He was implicated in this murder in 2022 - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/conspiracy-to-kill-...

And a Congress Party MLA was murdered 2 days ago and the person who called the hit was in Canada as well - https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/congress...

The guy who called the hit - Arsh Dalla - is a known associate of Nijjar - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/arsh-dalla-funded-g...

To be fair, most Indian commentators also assumed the hit was indirectly called by the Indian govt when this happened. Especially after this former Khalistani turned BJP supporter was offed near the same Gurdawara a year ago by some hired hitmen - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ripudaman-si...

It's very much a tit-for-tat gang war that's being further enabled by black money, Punjabi politics, and clan politics (Jatt versus Bishnoi).

So happy I don't live in Surrey anymore.

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So I would expect that warrants would be issued, India and Canada would cooperate in the investigation and sentences would be handed by cooperating judicial systems. There's precedent for cross country justice being served. If this isn't working between Canada and India, it should be fixed. If Canada isn't cooperating where it ought, Canada should improve. I don't know anything about that. But was there an interpol warrant on this person?

> But was there an interpol warrant on this person?

Yes [0]

> would cooperate in the investigation and sentences would be handed by cooperating judicial systems

They don't really cooperate.

A lot of this is due to mutual red tape, and also because of jurisdictional issues (eg. is transnational crime under the CSIS, the RCMP, the Vancouver PD? Which court does it go to?) because Canada is very similar to India structurally (weird hyper-federalism mixed with federal powers attempting to further gain control).

Also the Indian equivalent of law enforcement isn't the greatest either due to federal-state conflicts along with like 6-8 different competing federal law enforcement agencies, plus a couple national security ones.

[0] - https://torontosun.com/news/national/what-we-know-about-slai...

I didn't know this, and these types of details would definitely modulate my (and probably other's) perception of India's justification. Example: if there was credible imminent threat, and uncooperative foreign government giving no alternative but the emergency use of clandestine force.

> modulate my (and probably other's) perception of India's justification

This whole controversy was unplanned.

There have been ongoing discussions between the Five Eyes and India about this hit and the whole Khalistan issue for months now, but Trudeau's hand was forced after the Globe and Mail (a newspaper that leans Conservative) gave him a 24 hour heads up that an article about this was about to be published.

Someone leaked, and now it's a cluster f.

However, a senior officer said, “Canada, which is a member of Interpol and talks about the rule of law, has disregarded Interpol red notices. As a rule, once a red notice is issued, a member country is bound to take the suspect(s) into custody”

Canada yet to act on Interpol notices against Khalistani gangsters - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne...

Because India has ridiculous history of making up charges against people whom they don’t like politically. Search “Umar Khalid”.

This changes everything and makes India’s actions seem reasonable. It’s akin to the US taking out an Al-Qaeda member in Yemen or Pakistan.

I'd disagree, and plenty of Indian commentators disagreed at the time as well [0].

Paying hitmen to kill violent idiots is a bad look. There are multiple other levers that could be pushed.

All of this only really started after Lawrence Bishnoi started his gang war in Punjab/Haryana/Delhi/Rajasthan.

There's a lot of shifting alliances and blood being spilled now that politics in the state of Punjab are in a flux after the AAP won and destroyed the entire political status quo of Congress versus SAD/BJP.

My gut as someone who has lived in Surrey and has heard the stories in Gurdawaras and Mandirs is that this is Dawood-Chota Rajan 2.0

[0] - https://theprint.in/opinion/security-code/in-hardeep-singh-n...

Lawrence Bishnoi did claim responsibility for the 2nd killing. But what makes you so sure that the Indian government is contracting the hit squad? The big problem that Canada has is they have not even identified the killer. Even if Bishnoi makes big claims, how are they going to prove them? And then they will have to estabilish the link between GoI and Bishnoi. All that if at all their 'conspiracy theory' that India has a hand in killings holds any water. Which I honestly doubt.

> what makes you so sure that the Indian government is contracting the hit squad

It was reported that Pavan Kumar Rai posted a hit on Nijjar on some deepweb website used to hire assassins.

If someone can find that for me I'd appreciate it because I really don't want to go on a hunt for that citation.

> It was reported that Pavan Kumar Rai posted a hit on Nijjar on some deepweb website used to hire assassins.

If that is the case, I'd have hoped it would be viral by now. But anyhow, they would have to establish the link between the Pavan Kumar Rai's activities and the killer. The killer who they have not identified.

It's similar to when Biden said Russia's Nord stream gas pipelines will be no more if Russia invades Ukraine. When the sabotage was done, no one could blame the US since there was no evidence linking it to them.

India and the US are not in remotely comparable positions geopolitically. Yemen or Pakistan asserting their right to self defense to the UN to justify declaring war on the US would simply be suicide for them, and just another middle eastern country to topple for the US. So the US just informs the UNSC that they are killing Bin Laden on Pakistani soil, and do so in such a way as to give Pakistan plausible justification for not declaring war, since they have no interest in doing so.

If Canada decided that they were going to declare war based on self-defense, before going to the UN, they'd be going to the US and NATO, the most powerful military organizations on Earth. Canada, even just as the US's hat, enjoys the kind of superpower status that India can only fantasize about.

The US is not going to war with India for Canada over this.

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