Nine months after the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, video footage of the incident has surfaced, CBC News reported.
Nijjar, designated a terrorist by India in 2020, was shot and killed outside a gurudwara in Surrey, British Columbia, on the evening of June 18, 2023.
CBC News obtained the video from 'The Fifth Estate', a Canadian investigative documentary series that airs on the CBC network. The footage has been verified by more than one source, CBC News reported.
The video shows Nijjar leaving the parking lot of the gurudwara in his grey Dodge Ram pickup truck, even as a white Sedan plys on the adjacent road. As he approaches the exit, the car pulls in front of Nijjar and blocks his truck. Then, two men run up to the truck and shoot Nijjar before fleeing the scene in a silver Toyota Camry, CBC News reported.
Two witnesses, who were playing football in a field nearby when the incident took place, said that they ran towards the spot from where the gunshots were heard and also attempted to chase the assailants.
Bhupinder Singh Sidhu, one of the witnesses, told The Fifth Estate that they saw "two guys running". "We started running towards...where the sound was coming from.
He told his friend, Malkit Singh, to chase the armed men on foot as he tried to help Nijjar. Sidhu further told The Fifth Estate that he tried to "press" Nijjar's chest, and "shake him to see if he was breathing".
"But he was totally unconscious. He was not breathing," he added.
Malkit Singh chased the assailants until they boarded the Toyota Camry and escaped the scene, adding there were three others sitting inside the car, CBC News reported. Singh recalled he and Sidhu smelling "smoke from the guns everywhere".
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is yet to name any suspect in the Nijjar killing or make arrests, CBC News reported.
The killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar sparked a massive diplomatic row between India and Canada, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged in September last year that India was involved in the incident. Trudeau claimed that agents of the Indian government were involved in the killing of Nijjar on Canadian soil.
India, however, rejected the claims, terming those as "absurd and motivated".
