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On June the 18th, Hardeepe Signager, a prominent Canadian Sikh, was gunned down outside a temple in British Columbia.

Two weeks ago, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India of having been responsible

for the murder. It's hard to think of many precedents for one democratic country accusing another

of violating its territory in this way. Meanwhile, Canada's allies, including the UK,

have been surprisingly uncharacteristically quiet about

the whole affair. Why is that? Why might Narendra Modi's India have been involved in the assassination

and what does it all tell us about India's rising global influence? Step inside the briefing room and

together we'll find out.

First to Canada on what seems to have happened there.

Nadine Yusuf is the BBC's Canada correspondent based in Toronto.

Nadine Yusuf, who was Hardip Singh Nijar?

So Hardeep Singh Najjar was a Sikh man who lived in Surrey, British Columbia.

He came to Canada in 1997 and he became a Canadian citizen in 2007.

So in his life in Canada, he was a plumber with a wife and two kids.

He was also a Sikh separatist and he was the president of his local Sikh temple in Surrey, which also happens to be actually one of the largest in the area.

Right. And when you say he was an activist, what was he actually seeking to have done?

Right. So he was publicly campaigning for Coloston, which is an independent state for

Sikhs. He'd been vocal about his support for Colistone for years. He talked about it a lot to

supporters at the temple. And he had always said that he wanted to be done through peaceful means,

basically saying that he wants it done through a referendum in which seek people in the

diaspora, you know, not just in Canada, but in the US and Britain and elsewhere, get to

...