The Lakshmi Narayan Mandir, a prominent temple in Canada’s British Columbia state that was visited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015, was vandalised with anti-India pro-Khalistani posters on Saturday, said reports.
CCTV footage from the security cameras showed two people on the Surrey temple premises putting up posters on the main door. The posters pasted on its front gate and rear wall in the wee hours of Saturday were removed after they were discovered in the morning.
“We never expected something like this,” Hindustan Times quoted Satish Kumar, the president of the temple, as saying.
One of the posters, portraying pro-Khalistan leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar as a “martyr”, read, “Khalistan referendum – Shaheed Jathedar Hardeep Singh Nijjar – Canada – Investigate India’s Role in June 18th Assassination.”
Nijjar was shot dead in his truck on June 18 by two masked men in the parking lot of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, where the desecrated Hindu temple is also located.
In 2022, the NIA declared a Rs 10 lakh reward on Nijjar after he was accused of conspiring to kill a Hindu priest in Jalandhar. Nijjar allegedly trained Khalistan Tiger Force militants and tried to revive the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), THE WEEK reported earlier.
Nijjar had several FIRs against him and was allegedly behind the killing of Indian-origin Canadian businessman Ripudaman Malik who was shot dead on July 14, 2022, in Surrey.
BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, another prominent Hindu temple in Canada’s Ontario, was vandalised by unidentified people with “anti-Hindu and anti-India graffiti” on April 5, 2023.
On January 31, the Gauri Shankar temple in Brampton was defaced with anti-India graffiti. At least three similar vandalism incidents were reported in Canada last year as well.
Security beefed up at Indian High Commission in London
Separately, the UK has beefed up safety and security of the Indian High Commission in London and its staff members, British Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said on Sunday. This comes around five months after the mission was attacked by pro-Khalistani forces who pulled down the national flag from a pole at the front of the building.
“Let me be very clear about this. This is not an Indian problem in the UK. Whenever there is radicalisation in the UK of UK citizens, this is a British problem. And so any attempt to radicalise any UK citizen in any direction will be dealt with by the British government,” he told PTI. “That is why we have the Prevent Programme and we are using it to face those challenges of radicalisation across different communities.”
On Friday, the minister announced a fund of 95,000 pounds (around Rs 1 crore) to enhance the country’s capability to tackle “pro-Khalistan extremism”.