India-Canada row escalates as both nations expel diplomats

New Delhi: India on Monday decided to withdraw its High Commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and five of his colleagues after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government tagged them as “persons of interest” in the investigation into the killing of the Khalistani Sikh extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in the North American country.

Ottawa’s move to bring India’s diplomats and other officials in Canada within the ambit of the probe into the June 2023 murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar prompted New Delhi to withdraw them. Canada claimed that India had decided to withdraw its diplomats after being notified about their expulsion. India also retaliated by expelling six diplomats of Canada.

Canada’s acting High Commissioner in New Delhi, Stewert Wheeler, was summoned to the South Block on the Raisina Hills where Secretary (East) at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Jaideep Mazumdar, conveyed to him the strong displeasure of the government over the latest attempt by Justin Trudeau’s government to smear India.

Wheeler and Patrick Hebert, Ottawa’s deputy envoy to New Delhi, are among Canada’s six diplomats whom India asked to leave by 11:59 pm on October 19.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) alleged in a statement that a multidisciplinary team constituted by it had “learned a significant amount of information about the breadth and depth of criminal activity orchestrated by agents of the Government of India, and consequential threats to the safety and security of Canadians and individuals living in Canada”.

Mazumdar told Wheeler that the actions of Justin Trudeau’s government “in an atmosphere of extremism and violence” had endangered the safety of the diplomats of India in Canada. “We have no faith in the current Canadian Government's commitment to ensure their security. Therefore, the Government of India has decided to withdraw the High Commissioner and other targeted diplomats and officials,” the MEA stated in a readout after Ottawa’s top diplomat in New Delhi was summoned.

Ottawa sent a diplomatic communication to New Delhi on Sunday suggesting that Verma and other diplomats of India in Canada were “persons of interest” in the police investigation into the murder of Nijjar at the parking lot of a gurdwara at Surrey in the British Columbia province of the North American country on June 18 last year.

“Canada has provided credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the Government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Now, it is time for India to live up to what it said it would do and look into all those allegations,” Wheeler told journalists while leaving South Block after meeting Mazumdar. “It is in the interest of both our countries and the people of our countries to get to the bottom of this. Canada stands ready to cooperate with India."

New Delhi’s relations with Ottawa nosedived after Trudeau on September 18 last year had claimed that his government’s security agencies had been actively pursuing the ‘credible allegations’ about ‘a potential link’ between the agents of the Government of India and the killing of Nijjar in Canada. New Delhi had dismissed Ottawa’s allegation, which had however triggered a diplomatic row, with both sides expelling each other’s diplomats and issuing tit-for-tat travel advisories. India had called Canada a safe haven for terrorists and suspended issuing visas for Canadians. It, however, later restarted issuing certain categories of visas for the citizens of Canada. New Delhi also made Ottawa downsize its high commission in the national capital of India and its consulates in other cities in the country, leading to the departure of 41 diplomats of Canada.

The RCMP earlier this year arrested four citizens of India in connection with the killing of Nijjar, who had once led the Khalistan Tiger Force and had been one of India’s most wanted fugitive terrorists. He had been living in Canada for the past several years and had been involved in running the campaign for carving out Khalistan from India.

Ottawa’s latest move to bring Verma and his colleagues within the ambit of its probe into the killing of Nijjar is likely to add momentum to the propaganda by the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) and other such organisations, alleging the role of the officials of the Government of India in targeting the Khalistani Sikh activists campaigning in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries in the West for the secession of Khalistan from the South Asian nation.

The US prosecutors on November 29, 2023, alleged that Nikhil Gupta, arrested in Prague and currently incarcerated in a jail in Brooklyn, had been an associate of an official of an agency of the Government of India and the official had engaged him to hire a hitman to assassinate SFJ leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York.

New Delhi dismissed the allegations against the diplomats of India in Canada as “preposterous imputations” and ascribed them to the political agenda of the government led by Trudeau. It minced no words to accuse Trudeau of harbouring “hostility” towards India for the sake of his “vote-bank politics”. “Since Trudeau made certain allegations in September 2023, the Canadian Government has not shared a shred of evidence with the Government of India, despite many requests from our side. This latest step follows interactions that have again witnessed assertions without any facts. This leaves little doubt that on the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains,” the MEA stated on Monday.

Verma, who joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1988, is India’s senior-most serving diplomat who earlier served as ambassador to Japan and Sudan. He also served in Italy, Türkiye, Vietnam, and China during his long career spanning 36 years. “The aspersions cast on him by the Government of Canada are ludicrous and deserve to be treated with contempt,” a spokesperson of the MEA stated.

Ottawa’s latest move came just a few days after Trudeau claimed that he had a discussion with Modi on the sideline of the East Asia Summit in Vientiane. New Delhi, however, said that Trudeau and Modi had no substantial discussion.