Two Sikh activists. Two assassination plots. Two democratic allies. Yet three years after the events that shook relations between India, Canada and the United States, the legal record points in opposite directions.
In Canada, investigators concluded they lacked sufficient evidence to charge Indian government officials in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. In the United States, prosecutors secured a guilty plea establishing a murder-for-hire conspiracy allegedly involving an Indian intelligence officer targeting Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
At first glance, the outcomes appear contradictory. They are not. Instead, they illustrate how alleged covert operations that rely on intermediaries can complicate criminal prosecution while preserving plausible deniability. The divergence between the two cases reflects four structural realities: different evidentiary foundations, different investigative opportunities, the alleged use of criminal intermediaries, and the geopolitical importance of India as a strategic partner. That not inconsistency is the real Nijjar-Pannun paradox.
Two Cases, Two Legal Realities
The two cases unfolded against the backdrop of the Khalistan movement, which India regards as a national security threat while its supporters describe it as a movement advocating Sikh self-determination. That political divide shaped official responses long before either case entered a courtroom.
When Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, in June 2023, Canada treated the murder as far more than an ordinary homicide. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canadian intelligence possessed credible allegations linking Indian agents to the assassination. Diplomatic expulsions followed, and relations between Ottawa and New Delhi entered one of their deepest crises in decades.
Three years later, however, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced that investigators had found no evidence sufficient to charge Indian government officials. Instead, Canadian and American indictments focused on members of transnational criminal networks, including individuals allegedly associated with the Lawrence Bishnoi organisation.
Legally, that was not an exoneration. It was an evidentiary outcome. Criminal prosecutions require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas intelligence assessments frequently rely on classified information that cannot easily be introduced in court.
The unanswered questions nevertheless remain. Why would a criminal organisation target Nijjar, whose significance derived from political activism rather than organised crime? Some analysts argue that criminal actors acted independently. Others suggest they may have served as intermediaries for state interests, providing plausible deniability should an operation become exposed. Those competing explanations remain contested and have not been established before any court. The Pannun investigation followed a fundamentally different path.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Indian national Nikhil Gupta was recruited by Vikash Yadav, identified by prosecutors as an officer of India’s external intelligence agency, to arrange Pannun’s assassination in New York. Gupta believed he was negotiating with a contract killer. Instead, he was speaking with an undercover DEA source working alongside the FBI. That single investigative fact changed everything.
Unlike the Nijjar investigation, which largely attempted to reconstruct events after the killing had already occurred, the Pannun investigation captured the alleged conspiracy while it was unfolding. Conversations were recorded. Payments were negotiated. Operational instructions were documented. Instead of relying primarily on intelligence assessments and circumstantial evidence, prosecutors acquired direct evidence capable of surviving judicial scrutiny. The operation never reached its intended target. The prosecution did.
Gupta’s guilty plea transformed allegations into judicial findings. Court filings further alleged that he referred to Nijjar’s killing while discussing future operations, stating that “Nijjar was also the target” and adding that “we have so many targets.” Those statements alone do not establish a broader state-directed campaign, but they became part of the evidentiary record before the court.
The difference between the two cases was therefore not simply legal. It was structural. One investigation attempted to reconstruct an alleged conspiracy after an assassination had already been completed. The other documented an alleged conspiracy in real time.
Plausible Deniability as an Operational Strategy
The deeper lesson extends beyond India. In a number of international cases, intelligence services have been accused of relying on criminal intermediaries, proxies or deniable networks to distance decision-makers from acts of violence carried out beyond national borders. Whether such allegations ultimately prove true in any individual case, this operational model presents significant challenges for investigators.
Every intermediary creates another evidentiary barrier. Criminal organisations possess independent motives. Communications become fragmented. Financial transactions pass through multiple hands. The greater the operational distance between officials and perpetrators, the more difficult criminal attribution becomes.
If prosecutors cannot bridge those gaps with admissible evidence, political suspicion alone cannot sustain a criminal prosecution.
The Pannun case disrupted that pattern. Because Gupta unknowingly negotiated with undercover law enforcement, investigators effectively observed the alleged conspiracy from inside the network itself. The very mechanism that allegedly sought to conceal responsibility instead generated the evidence necessary for prosecution.
India has consistently maintained that any misconduct connected to the operation resulted from the actions of an individual acting outside official policy.
International law approaches the question differently. Under the International Law Commission’s Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, conduct performed by a state organ is generally attributable to the state even when that official exceeds authority or violates instructions while acting in an official capacity. Whether that principle ultimately applies depends upon facts that remain disputed. Yet the broader legal point is clear: a “rogue agent” explanation does not automatically end the inquiry into state responsibility.
Equally important, no public judicial evidence has directly implicated Prime Minister Narendra Modi or senior members of the Indian Cabinet in authorising the alleged conspiracy. The prosecution has remained focused on the individuals identified in the indictment. Preserving that distinction is essential if legal analysis is to remain separate from political speculation.
When Justice Meets Geopolitics
The legal differences explain why one investigation produced a conviction while the other did not. They do not fully explain why the political consequences have remained comparatively restrained.
That answer lies in geopolitics.
Canada has gradually restored engagement with India through renewed trade negotiations and strategic cooperation despite the unresolved political controversy surrounding the Nijjar case.
The United States has pursued a similar balance. It prosecuted the alleged conspiracy while carefully avoiding public accusations against India’s highest political leadership. Criminal accountability has proceeded alongside continued strategic partnership.
This raises a broader question that extends well beyond India.
Have Western governments quietly accepted different standards of political accountability for strategic partners than for geopolitical adversaries?
Russia’s alleged poisonings in Europe triggered sweeping sanctions, while Saudi Arabia faced sustained international condemnation following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Although those cases differ significantly in their factual and legal circumstances, they illustrate how states accused of conducting operations beyond their borders can face very different diplomatic consequences. India, by contrast, occupies a pivotal place in Western Indo-Pacific strategy and is increasingly viewed as indispensable in balancing China’s rise. That strategic reality inevitably shapes diplomatic calculations.
The Nijjar and Pannun cases therefore reveal more than the fate of two Sikh activists. They demonstrate how modern covert operations, evidentiary standards and geopolitical interests increasingly intersect. Intelligence agencies operate in secrecy. Courts require admissible evidence. Governments pursue strategic priorities. Those three systems rarely produce identical outcomes.
The lesson of the Nijjar and Pannun cases is not simply that evidence differs between investigations. It is that modern states may increasingly conduct covert operations through structures that blur the line between intelligence services and criminal intermediaries, making accountability exceptionally difficult. When strategic partnerships become indispensable, the burden of proof rises while the political appetite for confrontation falls.
Justice, in the end, becomes not only a question of evidence. It becomes a question of geopolitics.
