India yesterday said that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was “cavalier” over his handling of the diplomatic fallout following the killing last year of a Sikh separatist in Canada.
New Delhi held firm its defiant stance toward Ottawa — an approach in sharp contrast to its compliant attitude this week toward the US, where India is also accused of directing a separate assassination plot.
Canada has alleged that India arranged the killing of a Sikh separatist, naturalized Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, murdered in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Vancouver in June last year.
Photo: Reuters
India has called the allegations “preposterous.”
Trudeau, at a parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday, said that Canada had “clear ... indications that India had violated Canada’s sovereignty.”
Canadian Deputy High Commissioner to India Stewart Wheeler, who India has ordered to leave by tomorrow night, has said that Ottawa had provided “credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen.”
Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Randhir Jaiswal yesterday said that India had not seen that evidence.
“Canada has presented us [India] no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations that it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats,” Jaiswal said in a statement. “The responsibility for the damage that this cavalier behavior has caused to India-Canada relations lies with Prime Minister Trudeau alone.”
Nijjar — who immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2015 — had advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, carved out of India.
He had been wanted by Indian authorities for alleged terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.
Four Indian nationals have been arrested in connection with Nijjar’s murder.
Last year, the Indian government briefly curbed visas for Canadians and this week both countries expelled each other’s ambassadors.
New Delhi’s response to Washington has been very different, with the US Department of State on Wednesday saying that India had told it that an intelligence operative accused of directing an assassination plot on US soil was no longer in government service.
US prosecutors charged an Indian citizen in November last year over a foiled attempt in New York to kill an advocate for a separate Sikh homeland.
The indictment described an “Indian government employee,” who was not publicly named, as recruiting the hitman and directing the assassination plot remotely, including by arranging the delivery of US$15,000 in cash.
India’s Hindustan Times, quoting an unnamed US official, on Monday said that India not only removed, but arrested the employee on “local charges.”
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