Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday accused the Indian government of enabling and directing violence against Canadian citizens.
Trudeau made this charge while appearing before the foreign interference committee in Ottawa, saying there were now “clearer indications” that India violated Canada’s sovereignty, when compared with the situation following the killing of pro-Khalistan figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18 last year.
“We had clear and certainly now ever clearer indications that India had violated Canada’s sovereignty,” he said.
He alleged that Indian diplomats were “collecting information on Canadians who are opponents or in disagreement with the Indian government” and passing that along to high levels in New Delhi, which was then directed towards to “criminal organisations like the Lawrence Bishnoi gang”.
He said the focus was on disrupting that “chain”. While the “first option” was asking India to waive diplomatic immunity for these officials, that did not happen. “Therefore, we had to ask them to leave the country,” he said.
Trudeau accused India of collecting information on Canadians with “covert, clandestine, coercive measures.” And said they used tactics like threatening to withhold family visas or paying sources.
He said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP’s decision to go public with the allegations on Monday was “entirely anchored in public safety, goal of disrupting chain of activities, resulting in driveby shootings, home invasions, extortion, even murder.”
Referring to the Nijjar killing, he said initially the immediate assessment was that it was gang related. However, the India angle came to light as they heard from South Asian MPs and the South Asian community that India was involved.
The government then asked intelligence agencies to look “more closely at the circumstances”.
By late July, early August, it was “fairly clear, credibly clear” that “India was involved in this killing,” he said.
This was something he had “to take extremely seriously, that violation of sovereignty, international rule of law.”
He said Ottawa did not want to “blow up the relationship” with India and officials sought cooperation but were refused. “Their ask of us was ‘how much do you know, given us the evidence’,” he said, adding, “At that point is was primarily intelligence not hard evidentiary proof.”
He said that Canada had the “opportunity” to make the G20 summit in New Delhi last year “very uncomfortable” for India. “We chose not to,” he stressed.
India dismissed as “absurd” and “motivated” Trudeau’s statement in the House of Commons on September 18 last that there were credible allegations of a potential link between Indian agents and the murder.
He said India’s response was “to double down on attacks against this government, against its integrity, against Canada in general.”
India had also dismissed as politically motivated the declaration of six Indian officials as “persons of interest” in a communique sent by Global Affairs Canada to New Delhi last weekend. That led to the withdrawal of six diplomats, including India’s high commissioner to Ottawa Sanjay Kumar Verma, and consul general in Toronto Siddhartha Nath.
