Trudeau forced to accept meeting about Sikh activists in order to land in Punjab during 2018 trip

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India refused to let Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plane land in Punjab during a visit in 2018 unless he and his defence minister agreed to meet with a government official to air grievances about Sikh separatists in Canada, including Hardeep Singh Nijjar, according to a source with direct knowledge.

During the meeting, India’s minister for the Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh, handed Mr. Trudeau and then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan a dossier containing the names of about 10 Sikh activists whose activities the Indian government wanted curtailed, the source said.

The dossier was part of a years-long effort by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to press Canada to take legal action against Sikh separatists, whom India views as terrorists. Those frictions have boiled over in the aftermath of the slaying last June of Mr. Nijjar, who was gunned down in the parking lot of the temple in Surrey, B.C., where he was a leader. Months later, Mr. Trudeau stood in the House of Commons and suggested Indian agents may have been involved in Mr. Nijjar’s death.

During the 2018 trip, Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Sajjan had plans to travel to the northwestern state of Punjab, home to the majority of Sikhs. They were told they would not be able to land in the state unless they took the meeting. Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Sajjan wanted to avoid Capt. Singh because he had earlier described Mr. Sajjan’s father as a terrorist owing to the elder Sajjan’s previous position leading the World Sikh Organization, the source said. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source, who was not authorized to discuss the matter.

The meeting went ahead and Capt. Singh presented the dossier. All on the list, like Mr. Nijjar, were known for promoting the creation of a Sikh homeland carved out of the Punjab, an area Sikhs would call Khalistan.

The discussion with Capt. Singh was “not pleasant,” said the source. Canadian government officials assured the Indians they would look at the list presented to Mr. Sajjan, one that had previously been shared with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

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Canadian officials told their Indian counterparts that while they understood the concerns about possible terrorist activities, they also stressed Canadian police can’t arrest someone simply because they express views that New Delhi doesn’t like, the source said. This did not go over well with Indian officials, particularly in their department of external affairs, the source added.

Last Friday, the RCMP arrested three young Indian nationals in Edmonton and charged them with Mr. Nijjar’s murder. Assistant Commissioner David Teboul told the news conference the force’s probe included “investigating connections to the government of India.”

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Mr. Nijjar was a leading organizer with Sikhs for Justice, a group organizing a symbolic referendum advocating for the creation of Khalistan. Hundreds of thousands of Sikhs have voted over several years in the campaign, which is not binding, in Canada, the United States, Britain and Australia.

India’s government classified Mr. Nijjar as a terrorist in 2021, but his supporters see him as a human-rights activist exercising his right to free speech.

The dossier was shared at a time when CSIS had been working with India’s spy service, known as the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, to look into the activities of Sikh separatists living in Canada, including possible fundraising and any links to terrorism, the source said.

Canadian officials assured the Indians before the trip that Mr. Trudeau would make a strong statement on terrorism and extremism, which he did but at the end of the visit.

Near the start of the trip, it became known that Jaspal Atwal, a convicted failed assassin, was invited to a pair of receptions with the Prime Minister and was even photographed with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau. Mr. Atwal was convicted in the 1980s of attempting to kill an Indian cabinet minister who was travelling in Canada.

Mr. Modi has become increasingly aggressive on the issue of Sikh separatists and what he and his government have described as Canada’s failure to respond. Last month, Mr. Modi said at a campaign rally in India that his government is done with asking foreign governments nicely to deal with people – mostly Sikhs – it considers terrorists living abroad, though he did not specifically mention Canada or the incident with Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Sajjan.

“Today, India no longer sends dossiers, ghar mein ghus kar maarta hai (kills enemies inside their houses),” he said during a speech last week. He was quoted in NDTV.

Since Mr. Trudeau made public the allegations against India in the House of Commons last fall, more evidence has emerged of the involvement of Indian officials in the alleged plot, including a criminal indictment in the United States, which alleges an Indian intelligence officer enlisted underworld figures to assassinate Sikhs who advocate for Khalistan.

Dan Stanton, a former executive manager at CSIS, said it’s very difficult to believe India provided Canada with credible evidence about alleged Sikh militants on home soil and Ottawa did nothing about it. Instead, he’s skeptical of the information coming from the Indian spy service.

“When you look at their security intelligence services and the reliability of their information, with the Indians, it’s always been problematic,” said Mr. Stanton, who worked on Sikh extremism in the 1990s but confirmed he hasn’t seen the 2018 dossier.

“The idea that this man could be a terrorist according to Canadian legal standards, and just be walking around, is absurd. It sounds to me the information India would have provided wouldn’t have passed muster and met the threshold for the RCMP to arrest this fellow and charge him.”

India’s government has a history of inflating the threat of the Khalistan movement for political purposes, and Mr. Nijjar’s case feels no different, he said.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story and headline suggested the Prime Minister’s plane was in the air when Canadian officials were told they could not land in Punjab unless they agreed to a meeting about Sikh separatists. This story has been updated to correct the timeline.