DM Monitoring
Ottawa: Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made claims alleging that diplomats from India are involved in murders and violence across the Canadian soil.
While testifying before a public inquiry, he said Canada had clear intelligence linking Indian diplomats to “drive-by shootings, home invasions, violent extortion and even murder in and across Canada”. India had made a “horrific mistake” in violating Canadian sovereignty, Trudeau added.
The prime minister’s claims came two days after the Indian diplomats were accused of involvement in “criminal” activities on Canada’s soil by senior Canadian police officials which range from homicide and targeted assassinations to extortion, intimidation and coercion against members of the Canadian Sikh community, reported The Guardian. The officials alleged that Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner himself, were implicated not only in the high profile killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist who was gunned down outside a gurdwara in a suburb of Vancouver last June, but also connected to other murders on Canadian soil.
Moreover, the diplomats had even worked with a gang run by India’s most notorious mob boss to get their dirty work done, according to the officials.
The latest allegations are a considerable escalation of a diplomatic row that has damaged India-Canada relations, which began last year when Trudeau stood up in parliament and said there were “credible allegations” linking the Indian government to the killing of Nijjar, which is an accusation India rejected as “absurd”.
It is also worth noting that allegations of an Indian campaign of transnational violence and harassment have not only emerged in Canada but in the US, UK and Pakistan since then, where prominent Sikh activists say they have received threats to their lives.
Meanwhile, India’s envoy to Canada, who is being expelled over what Ottawa says are links to the murder of a Sikh leader, insisted in an interview he was innocent and said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had wrecked bilateral political ties.
Both countries on Monday ordered out six diplomats in tit-for-tat moves over Ottawa’s allegations that New Delhi was targeting Indian dissidents on Canadian soil.
Trudeau specifically tied the six to the murder of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year in British Columbia. Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s envoy to Canada, told CTV that Trudeau had been relying on intelligence rather than evidence. “On the basis of intelligence, if you want to destroy a relationship, be my guest. And that’s what he did,” Verma said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
Asked whether he had anything to do with Nijjar’s murder, Verma said: “Nothing at all. No evidence was presented. (This is) politically motivated.” Canada is home to the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab and demonstrations in favour of a separate homeland carved out of India have irked New Delhi.
