TORONTO – One of the Indian citizens arrested in recent days on charges of killing the Sikh separatist activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar entered Canada using a study permit “obtained in a few days”, as he himself stated in a published video on Facebook on 30 December 2019. 

In the video (you can watch it here), Karan Brar states that he has requested a student visa through the immigration services of the company “EthicWorks ” in Bathinda, Punjab (also based in Canada). “And within a few days I received it” he said.

The video was published by “EthicWorks” itself on its Facebook page, together with a photo of Brar, defined by the same company as “one more happy client from from Kotkapura”, a city north of Bathinda which is actually indicated by The Times of India as the city of the young Indian arrested in Canada (read the article here: Karan Brar, one of the three arrested in Hardeep Nijjar killing in Canada, belongs to Kotkapura in Punjab). “Congratulations, Karan Brar, on your Canadian study visa,” reads the caption under the video.

On the same Facebook page, a few days earlier (to be precise, December 27, 2019), a post was published, with a photo of Karan Brar while he was handed the Visa for Canada by the owner of the same company that handled his application (see the screenshot below: Brar is on the left).

One of the “likes” on that post is from Karan Brar himself and takes you back to a profile from which it is clear that Brar (unless it is a sensational case of homonymy) began studying at Bow Valley College in Calgary on April 30, 2020 and moved to Edmonton (where he was arrested last week) on May 4, 2020. In that same profile, a few years earlier – on July 19, 2014, Brar himself posted a photo with a rifle, a gun and some ammunition: this is a post that is still easily accessible, which can be reached quickly by “scrolling” through Brar’s profile for just a few seconds (see the screeshot below).

As is known, Brar, 22 years old, was arrested in Edmonton on Friday, together with Kamalpreet Singh, 22 years old and Karanpreet Singh, 28 years old: according to the accusation, two of them shot Nijjar in the parking lot of the Guru Nanak Sikh temple of Surrey (British Columbia) on June 18, 2023, while the other was driving the getaway car.

Nijjar was a Sikh from the movement for the independence of Khalistan, the Indian region of Punjab with a Sikh majority: a separatist, considered a “political activist” in Canada and a “terrorist” in India.

A few months after the crime, last September, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared that the investigation had led to possible links with the Indian government. But only last week, seven months after Trudeau’s statements, the three Indians were arrested: and the RCMP told journalists that the investigation is ongoing and that the suspected involvement of the Indian government is still being examined, which, therefore, would not be proven and would be anything but certain.

What is certain, however, is that the arrests have led to questions about immigration practices in Canada and the control methods of the IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) which on the one hand “picks fleas” from people with certified and with an impeccable past, forcing them to wait endlessly (as evidenced by the comments on the IRCC posts on Linkedin: see the screenshot below, public and visible to anyone on the IRCC’s page), while on the other hand it issues “easy permits” in record time: based on which criteria, and after which checks?

Global News, the first media outlet to publish the news of Brar’s video, today, asked – unsuccessfully – for comment from both the IRCC and the Federal Immigration Minister, Marc Miller. At the time the Visa was issued to Brar, the competent ministers were Ahmed Hussen (until 19 November 2019) and Marco Mendicino (from 20 November 2019).