TOI correspondent from London: It was the British intelligence agency GCHQ which handed a dossier to Ottawa of intercepted communications alleging the Indian government was behind various plots to kill Khalistan separatists, according to a Bloomberg documentary.The video documentary by “Bloomberg Originals”, titled “Inside the Deaths That Rocked India’s Relations With the West”, claims that the Cheltenham-based intelligence agency, which specialises in signals intelligence, was the one that intercepted conversations between individuals discussing three potential “targets”: Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, Avtar Singh Khanda in Britain and Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in the US. Analysts believe the individuals having these conversations were “working on behalf of the Indian govt”, the documentary claims.India has dismissed such allegations as absurd.Hardeep Singh Nijjar, designated a terrorist by India, was gunned down in Surrey in June 2023. When allegations that he was politically assassinated started to circulate, the then Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s advisers asked security agencies to undertake a fresh assessment of that crime.While that effort was underway in late July 2023, the UK, one of Canada’s Five Eyes partners, told Ottawa that it had obtained “some relevant information” which was “extremely sensitive”.The UK said its intelligence would only be shared if it was hand-delivered to Ottawa, kept off electronic systems, and only a handful of Canadian officials, pre-approved by London, could see it, according to the documentary.The file was a summary of conversations intercepted by GCHQ between individuals who discussed three potential targets, Nijjar, Khanda and Pannun. “Later there was an exchange about how Nijjar had been successfully eliminated,” the documentary claimed.“The document didn’t name the people whose conversations had been tapped or Nijjar’s assassins, but the implication was clear to the analysts: There was a strong chance he’d been murdered in an operation directed by the Indian state,” Bloomberg claimed in a written feature accompanying the video, titled: “Finish him, brother”.Trudeau’s then national security and intelligence adviser, Jody Thomas, arranged to brief Trudeau and a few close advisers in a secure conference room designed to prevent eavesdropping. A few days later Canadian intelligence received another British wiretap capturing a conversation referring to how Nijjar had been successfully eliminated, the Bloomberg feature claims.