Row over Sikh leader's murder

Islamabad
Karachi

PAKISTAN 
Muslim majority

Kashmir
Status remains unresolved

Amritsar
New Delhi

Punjab
Sikhs campaigning for independent state of Khalistan

Mumbai

INDIA
Hindu majority

Kolkata

BANGLADESH
Former East Pakistan, independent since 1971


Aug 1947: India gains independence from Britain. Partition into India and Pakistan displaces some 15 million people

Jun 1984: Operation Blue Star - Indian forces storm Golden Temple at Amritsar - holiest Sikh shrine - to flush out separatists. Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale killed

Oct: Prime Minister Indira Ghandi (left) is assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards for ordering Blue Star. Her death triggers anti-Sikh riots, in which Hindu mobs brutalise and kill thousands of Sikhs

Jun 1985: Air India Flight 182 from Canada, carrying 329 people including 268 Canadian citizens, destroyed by bomb off west coast of Ireland. Sikh separatist group implicated

1997: Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar (right) becomes president of Sikh temple in Vancouver

2000: Canadian police arrest Ripudaman Singh Malik in connection with Flight 182 bomb

2005: Malik acquitted of bombing

Jun 2022: Malik shot dead

Jun 2023: Nijjar shot dead near Sikh temple in Vancouver

Sep 18: Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claims that “agents of the Indian government” were involved in assassination of Nijjar

Sep 19: Canada expels Indian diplomat. India expels Canadian diplomat in tit-for-tat move


Sources: Associated Press, CBC News, Reuters 
Pictures: Getty Images, Sikh PA 
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