Indians deluged with false reports about release of Nijjar murder suspects
Numerous Indian media outlets reported men accused of killing B.C. Sikh activist were no longer in custody
Millions of Indians woke up Thursday to a deluge of news stories falsely claiming that the four Indian nationals accused of murdering Sikh Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023 had been released from custody after the case against them fell apart.
The stories were repeated in many different outlets, including the Times of India, which headlined its report "Four Indians Accused in Nijjar Murder Case Released from Custody in Canada."
CBC News has confirmed that the reports are false. None of the Nijjar accused have left custody, nor are they expected to.
"It is not true that the four accused have been released on bail," Ann Seymour of the BC Prosecution Service told CBC News. "All four accused were detained, and they continue to remain in custody."
The next court appearance is a pretrial conference on Feb. 11, and they will also appear in court on Feb. 12.
No fact-checking on social media rumours
Indian media outlets that repeated the false claims include the Hindu Post, First Post, Hindustan Times, Business Today, Business Standard, India Today, The New Indian Express, Mint News, News 18 and others.
The news appears to have originated with claims made by Canadian social media accounts that themselves appear to be based on a misreading of court documents. One such tweet garnered nearly 300,000 views and was still up at the time of publication of this article.
Last November, Crown prosecutors moved the case to B.C. Supreme Court from B.C. Provincial Court, entering a stay of proceedings — or putting a hold on the legal process — in the initial provincial court case.
The province's online court records show that the original provincial court case was stayed, leading to the misreading and false claims that the men had been released from custody.
Several Indian media outlets linked the false news to a supposed collapse of the Canadian police case against the four men, Karan Brar, Amandeep Singh, Kamalpreet Singh and Karanpreet Singh, or to the supposed failure of "clueless" Canadian police to oppose their release on bail.
Those claims are also false. Most or all of the articles remained in circulation at the time this report was published.
'Godi' media
Critics of the Narendra Modi government have pointed to an erosion of journalistic standards and freedom of the press as one of the consequences of his populist, Hindu-centric and nationalist style of government.
The country has witnessed the emergence of an aggressively partisan "Godi" media, which adheres closely to Modi government narratives and sometimes targets the Modi government's perceived enemies with scurrilous or poorly substantiated reporting.
Some of the outlets that picked up the false claims about the Nijjar accused fit the Godi media profile, but others do not. The Times of India has been publishing for 186 years and is the world's largest-circulation English-language newspaper, yet appears not to have fact-checked the claims on social media any more than its more excitable counterparts in the Indian media scene.
Relations with India at a low
The allegations and arrests around the Nijjar killing have caused an unprecedented break in relations between Canada and India, with mutual expulsions dramatically reducing each country's diplomatic presence in the other.
Canada declared India's High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma and five other diplomats persona non grata in October, after the RCMP accused the Modi government of fomenting a campaign of violence and intimidation in Canada that included acts of murder, arson, extortion and assault.
CBC News has reported that investigators are looking at the four accused in the Nijjar killing, along with others, in connection with at least four other killings in Canada, including that of an 11-year-old boy.
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With files from Rhianna Schmunk and Philip Ling