NARRATIVE: 1,198 days after Surrey, Los Angeles puts a price on the man accused in Nijjar’s assassination

A parking lot in Surrey

Name number 543

The FBI made Satinderjeet Singh, known as Goldy Brar, the 543rd name on its list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives on September 28, 2026, in Los Angeles.

A reward comes with it. Up to US$1 million for anyone who helps arrest him.

In the United States, Brar is accused of ordering, with Lawrence Bishnoi, the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. He has not been tried.

Three letters

In the FBI’s documents, the victim has no name. He has initials. “H.S.N.”

A prominent political and religious leader, the FBI writes. From Punjab. Living in Canada.

He was 45. He was a Canadian citizen, CBC News notes.

He was president of the Guru Nanak gurdwara, according to The Canadian Press. He campaigned for an independent Sikh state. He openly criticized the Indian government, the National Post writes.

On June 18, 2023, two gunmen opened fire on him as he drove his truck out of the parking lot of the Guru Nanak Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia. He did not survive.

Three years and three months later, his name fits into three letters in an American indictment.

A temple. A city. Three letters.

Three letters in an indictment, a name in a city.

One million dollars

On every phone

Patrick Grandy runs the FBI’s Los Angeles field office. He promises that Brar’s face will be publicized “on every phone around the world” until he is caught.

Brar is considered extremely violent, armed and dangerous. The public is asked not to approach him.

An enemy of the public, Grandy called him, as quoted by CBC. Strong words. A strong poster too.

The FBI says he is based in the United States. The FBI says he has lived in California and in various parts of Canada. The Globe and Mail adds ties to Mexico.

Somewhere in California

Where is he?

“We do not know his exact location,” Grandy admitted, according to CTV News.

The RCMP, Canada’s federal police, was at the podium. If they knew where he was, Deputy Commissioner Lisa Moreland said, they would not be standing there today, the Globe reports.

The FBI is counting on the people around him. Adding the Canadian trafficker Ryan Wedding to the same list last year helped track him down in January, the Globe recalls.

Since 1950, 28 people wanted for crimes committed in the Los Angeles region have been added to the list, the FBI says.

Every phone carries his face, and none says where.

Operation Hard Ball

Thirty-seven defendants

On July 7, 2026, the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles unsealed three indictments.

37 defendants. Three criminal groups based in India. Racketeering. Extortion. Narcotics. Targeted assassinations.

The investigation is led by the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department and the RCMP. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli says he is working with police in Canada, Europe and Asia.

That day, 24 defendants were arrested or already in custody. Since then, four fugitives have been captured and one has died, according to the FBI. Five are still missing.

Brar. Major Singh. Sukhraj Singh Kang. A man known only as Kamal. Gurpreet Singh.

Three indictments. Only one targets the Bishnoi enterprise, which Brar allegedly helped lead, according to the FBI.

A prison in India

Lawrence Bishnoi is 33 years old. He has been imprisoned in India since 2015, CBC reports.

According to the indictment cited by the FBI, he ran his organization from his cell, with smuggled phones.

Brar, 32, spoke for him, according to the FBI. The National Post describes him as a childhood friend of Bishnoi who came to Canada after their university years.

From March 2024 to July 2025, the group allegedly stole about 520 kilograms of cocaine from rival gangs around Los Angeles, according to the indictment.

A cell in India, an accused network reaching all the way to Surrey.

The price and the question

Progress, and a silence

I read it as progress. I say so without reservation.

Real progress. Measurable. Dated.

I also read it as a silence.

The FBI’s documents describe a gang. They mention no government.

And on September 18, 2023, a Canadian prime minister told the House of Commons of credible allegations linking agents of the Indian government to this assassination. India has always denied it.

December in Ottawa

While Ottawa prepares for Narendra Modi’s visit, which Mark Carney has confirmed for December according to CTV News, the manhunt is being run out of Los Angeles.

I hesitate to write this. Accusing a state without evidence would be wrong. Staying silent on the question would be wrong too.

Here is my reading. The criminal chain is moving. The state question no longer has an official voice.

The accused has a price. The question has none.

The million moves ahead, the question falls behind.

September 2023

Credible allegations

On September 18, 2023, Justin Trudeau speaks in the Commons of credible allegations.

Any involvement of a foreign government in the death of a Canadian citizen, on Canadian soil, would be in his view an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty, CBC recalls.

Narendra Modi’s government denies ordering extrajudicial executions in Canada. Its foreign minister first calls the allegation absurd, according to CBC.

Six diplomats

In 2024, the RCMP and the government accuse Indian diplomats and consular officials of clandestine activities linked to homicides and extortion, CTV News recalls.

Ottawa expels six diplomats. New Delhi sends six home. Six for six.

In October 2024, before the inquiry into foreign interference, Trudeau names Bishnoi as a criminal link between the Indian government and violence in Canada, according to the National Post.

One name comes back. The name of the gang the FBI is chasing today.

The 2023 accusation broke the diplomatic relationship, CBC writes. And yet in June 2025, Mark Carney invited Modi to the G7 summit in Alberta. The leader of the world’s most populous country had to be at the table, he said.

In 2024, Bishnoi was already named beside a state.

Four accused in New Westminster

May 2024

In May 2024, the RCMP arrests four Indian nationals in their twenties who had come to Canada on temporary visas, according to CBC.

Karan Brar. Kamalpreet Singh. Karanpreet Singh. Amandeep Singh.

According to sources cited by CBC, they allegedly played distinct roles. Shooters. Drivers. Lookouts.

They are charged in the first degree in Nijjar’s death. They are charged with conspiring to take his life. They have not been tried.

The case is before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, in New Westminster, according to The Canadian Press.

Protected information

On February 19, 2026, The Canadian Press reports that the federal attorney general wants to shield certain information from disclosure in this trial.

The grounds invoked are the protection of international relations and of national security, under the Canada Evidence Act.

Four notices, received in 2024 and 2025, flagged sensitive or potentially injurious information. The application was filed in Federal Court.

International relations. In a homicide trial in Surrey.

For a homicide in Surrey, pages closed in the name of the state.

The story shifts

A gang case

Global News titled one of its videos on Operation Hard Ball this way: arrests that reshape the story of Nijjar’s assassination.

The story has indeed changed.

In 2023, the prime minister spoke of agents of a state. In 2026, the American indictments speak of a gang.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Trudeau himself had linked Bishnoi to the Indian government in 2024. And yet only one of the two stories has an indictment.

April 1

In March, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said he saw no current link to any foreign entity in his transnational repression files, according to CTV News.

On April 1, the RCMP clarified that it knows foreign states are carrying out intimidation in Canada. It cannot, it says, establish current criminal links.

In the FBI’s release, the victim remains “H.S.N.” Not a word about a state.

Gang charged, state denying, question untouched.

Only what can be proven

Evidence first

The opposing argument is strong. It holds up well.

Prosecutors charge only what they can prove. The evidence gathered in Los Angeles targets a gang. The RCMP sees no current criminal link to a state. Accusing a government without evidence would be irresponsible.

India itself obtained an Interpol red notice against Brar, the National Post reports.

Canada had put him on its list of most wanted fugitives as early as 2023, through the BOLO program.

A state accused without public evidence can use that. Denial gets easier. Caution protects the investigation too.

International relations

All of this is true. And yet one detail turns the argument around.

If the file held only a gang, why would the attorney general invoke international relations in the Surrey trial?

The Globe notes that Nijjar’s supporters and Canadian national security sources maintain that his death looked like an assassination ordered by the Indian government. India denies any involvement.

The allegations of 2023 and 2024 have been neither proven in public nor tried.

In other words, caution is right. Silence is not evidence.

Caution on the evidence, silence on the question.

What Ottawa did

September 2025

Here is what unsettles my reading, and I am publishing it.

On September 29, 2025, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree added the Bishnoi gang to the list of entities under the Criminal Code.

Its assets in Canada can be frozen or seized. Financing it becomes an offence. It was the 87th listed entity.

The department described it as a transnational criminal organization operating mainly from India, present where large diaspora communities live.

The listing can also inform decisions on admissibility to the country. It is a tool. It was used.

Nowhere to hide

On September 28, the minister’s office welcomed the FBI’s announcement, CTV News reports. Those accused of violence and intimidation have “nowhere to hide,” his press secretary said.

Transnational repression remains a “top priority,” the office adds.

Mark Carney also said he had spoken to Narendra Modi about Nijjar’s death and the prosecutions under way, CBC reports.

The RCMP had arrested the four men in the Surrey case as early as May 2024. It was in Los Angeles on September 28.

Ottawa has not dropped the criminal file. I write it because it is true.

Ottawa goes after the gang, and that is a fact.

Who pays the extortion

Businesses in its sights

We have to say who lives under this gang.

The Bishnoi gang engages in homicide, shootings and arson, Public Safety Canada wrote in 2025. It spreads fear through extortion and intimidation.

It targets, according to the department, prominent community members, businesses and cultural figures.

Deputy Commissioner Lisa Moreland speaks of homicides, shootings, death threats, extortion and arson. Lives wrecked, she says.

A message in Punjabi

In November 2023, Bishnoi claimed a shooting at the Vancouver home of a prominent Indian actor and singer, Global News reports.

In a message in Punjabi, he warned that no one could save his target.

A shopkeeper gets a call. The phone rings in the evening. The storefront light stays on. Fear decides for him.

They are the first people the million protects.

Extortion never shouts. It collects.

Seventy billion

A reliable partner

In November 2025, Mark Carney called India “a reliable trading partner,” CTV News reports.

On March 2, 2026, he met Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

Last week, he confirmed that Modi will come to Canada in December.

Since Carney took office, the tone toward India has shifted, CTV News writes. The expulsions of 2024 feel far away.

The two countries want to conclude a trade deal by the end of the year. The goal is to double trade, to $70 billion a year by 2030.

The parking lot, three years on

A million dollars on one man. Seventy billion on a relationship.

I am not saying one buys the other. I am saying they cross paths in December.

A gurdwara parking lot in the evening means car doors slamming, greetings, footsteps on wet asphalt. It is where a diaspora comes together.

Canada’s Sikh communities have long raised concerns about transnational repression linked to India, CTV News notes.

They now have a face on a poster. They have no public answer to the question of 2023.

Seventy billion and one million cross paths in December.

The five still missing

Four other fugitives

Brar is not alone. Four other Operation Hard Ball defendants are still at large.

The FBI asks people not to approach them. The FBI also asks people to call its toll-free line, anonymously if they wish.

Every poster is a door left ajar. One voice is enough.

A joint news conference

On September 28, the RCMP and the FBI held their first major joint news conference since a New York Times report on a rift between the two forces, the Globe reports.

According to that report, FBI Director Kash Patel temporarily suspended cooperation after a message posted on August 27. The RCMP found no sign of any break in intelligence sharing, the Globe writes.

That Monday, the two forces spoke with one voice.

Prosecutor Bill Essayli sees it as proof of the administration’s resolve to bring the full force of the law down on transnational criminal gangs.

It is a good move by Washington for Canada’s security. It is judged on a fact. The accused is on the list, and the RCMP is at the podium.

Five fugitives, and the first of them is worth a million.

What the list reveals

An address for the crime

Here is what this million reveals.

The crime has a court address: Los Angeles.

The crime has an indictment.

The crime has a poster.

It has a reward.

It has a toll-free number.

The question put to the House in 2023 has none of that. No indictment targets a state agent.

Before December

And yet it has not gone away. It waits in protected pages, in New Westminster.

I am not asking Ottawa to accuse New Delhi. It does not have the public evidence to do so.

I am asking it to say where things stand on the question its own prime minister raised in 2023.

That day, Trudeau spoke of sovereignty. The word has not aged. Neither has the question.

If the answer is “nowhere”…

The crime has an address. The question has none.

The question before the deal

Three years and three months

Three years and three months have passed since Surrey.

The accused has a poster. The case of the four accused is before the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Modi comes in December.

The FBI searches. The RCMP searches. A court in New Westminster hears the case. Ottawa negotiates.

Each does its job. None answers the question of 2023.

On September 28, Ottawa welcomed a poster. In the pages we read, it said nothing new about 2023.

Ahead of any signature

Should a trade deal with New Delhi wait until the question of 2023 gets an answer, or can it go first?

The poster will stay on the wall.

The initials stay in the indictment.

The name stays in Surrey.

A price in Los Angeles, three letters for a citizen of Surrey.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• FBI Los Angeles — Satinderjeet Singh added to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, September 28, 2026
• Public Safety Canada — Bishnoi gang listed under the Criminal Code, September 29, 2025
• The Canadian Press (CKOM) — information shielded in the Nijjar trial, February 19, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CTV News (CP24) — FBI reward and Modi’s December visit, September 28, 2026
• The Globe and Mail — US$1 million for Goldy Brar, September 28, 2026
• National Post — Goldy Brar on the FBI’s most wanted list, September 28, 2026