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Sitting in his lawyer’s office in Vancouver Thursday, Jaspal Atwal renounced his Sikh extremist past and instead cast himself as a reformed man who is trying to address the needs of the Indo-Canadian community by hobnobbing with politicians of all stripes.

Never, he insisted, did he expect that his recent appearance at a reception in Mumbai, India, where he was photographed next to Justin Trudeau’s wife, would cause such an uproar.

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“I was completely shocked and devastated,” he said, reading from a prepared statement.

“I am sorry for any embarrassment this matter has caused.”

After that photograph with Sophie Gregoire Trudeau was widely circulated, Atwal, who was convicted in the 1980s of attempting to assassinate a visiting Punjab cabinet minister in B.C., was promptly disinvited to a dinner at the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi featuring the prime minister — one episode in a gaffe-filled trip that raised questions about why Atwal’s name wasn’t flagged sooner.