Amit Shah
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah ordered agencies of the Government of India to carry out operations targeting Khalistani Sikh extremists in Canada, a senior official of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in Ottawa has alleged.
This is the first time Ottawa accused the political leadership of the Government of India of being involved in New Delhi’s alleged operations to gather information about Khalistani Sikh terrorists based in Canada as well as to coerce and intimidate them as well as to carry out violent acts against some of them.
The Trudeau Government earlier this month accused New Delhi’s envoy to Ottawa, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and his five colleagues of having a role in the June 18, 2023, killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who had managed to secure citizenship in Canada despite being one of the most wanted fugitive terrorists of India.
Sources in New Delhi dismissed the latest allegation by the Canadian Government against Amit Shah as baseless as were its accusations about the role of New Delhi in the killing of Nijjar.
Ottawa’s claim about the role of Shah in ordering the alleged operation of the agents of the Government of India against the Khalistani Sikh extremists based in Canada was first leaked to the Washington Post, a newspaper published in the US, by David Morrison, the deputy foreign affairs minister of the Trudeau Government. Morrison leaked what the Canadian Government cited as information about the alleged role of Shah in the operations against some North American country’s citizens who had been running a campaign in favour of secession of Khalistan from India. The newspaper published a report based on the leaks.
Morrison confirmed on Tuesday that he had leaked information to a journalist of the Washington Post. “The journalist called me and asked if it was that person. I confirmed it was that person,” Morrison told the members of the national security committee of the Canadian Parliament, referring to the allegation against the home minister of India.
He, however, did not elaborate on how the Canadian Government had come to know about the alleged role of Shah in the purported operations by the agents of the Government of India in the actions against the Khalistani Sikh extremists in the North American country.
Trudeau’s National Security Advisor Nathalie Drouin joined Morrison in informing the members of the Canadian Parliament that Ottawa had evidence of the Government of India first gathering information on Indian and Canadian citizens in Canada through the officials posted in New Delhi’s diplomatic and consular missions in Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver as well as the proxies recruited by them.
She said that the information had been subsequently passed along to the GoI agencies, which allegedly worked with the criminal network run by underworld don Lawrence Bishnoi.
Bishnoi, incarcerated in Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad, was linked to murder, coercion, intimidation, and other violent crimes in Canada, said Drouin.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) earlier this month alleged that the gang led by Lawrence Bishnoi was connected to the “agents” of the Government of India and was targeting the South Asian community, specifically the ones in favour of carving out a ‘Khalistan’ from India.
New Delhi recently withdrew Verma, the High Commissioner of Canada to India, and five of its other diplomats in the North American country after denying Ottawa’s request for waiving their diplomatic immunity and making them available for questioning by the RCMP investigators in connection with the murder of Nijjar. India also retaliated by expelling six diplomats of Canada
Nijjar had been murdered at the parking lot of a gurdwara in the British Columbia province of Canada on June 18, 2023. Trudeau had on September 18, 2023, first publicly claimed that his government had ‘credible information’ about the role of the Government of India in the killing of Nijjar.
The relations between the two nations have hit a new low since then.
Drouin on Tuesday said that the Trudeau Government had decided to go public about the allegations as India had not cooperated with Canada in the investigation.
New Delhi has been repeatedly saying that Ottawa had not shared a shred of evidence with it in support of the allegation against the Government of India.