New Delhi: India Monday announced that it had withdrawn High Commissioner to Canada Sanjay Kumar Verma and other “targeted diplomats and officials” — an unprecedented move after the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named them as “persons of interest” in the 2023 killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Later in the day, India also expelled six Canadian diplomats, including the acting high commissioner and the deputy commissioner. They have been asked to leave the country by 19 October.
According to a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the Canadian charge d’affaires was summoned by the Secretary (East) Monday evening and “informed that the baseless targeting of the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats and officials in Canada was completely unacceptable.”
“It was underlined that in an atmosphere of extremism and violence, the Trudeau Government’s actions endangered their safety. 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,” it added.
The MEA further said that it had been conveyed to the Canadian side that India reserved the right to take further steps in response to the Trudeau government’s support for extremism, violence and separatism against India.
Speaking to the media after exiting the South Block, Canadian Chargé d’Affaires Stewart Wheeler said, “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. 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.”
It was not immediately clear how many officers were being recalled. A total of 35 Indian diplomats were accredited with Canadian authorities and India had a total staff strength of 120.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that Canada had expelled six Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner. However, Indian officials said that the high commissioner had been withdrawn by New Delhi and stuck to the statement that the MEA had issued.
The newspaper also reported that Canadian officials “acquired” new information which they said pointed to a senior Indian government official and the country’s spy agency leading a “broader campaign of violence against Indian dissidents”.
The withdrawal of Indian diplomats came hours after the MEA said that received a diplomatic communication from Canada, Sunday, that the Indian high commissioner and other diplomats were “persons of interest” in a matter related to an investigation in the country.
Relations between New Delhi and Ottawa have been frosty since September 2023 when Trudeau claimed that Canada had credible evidence linking Indian agents to the assassination of Nijjar that year, prompting a strong reaction from New Delhi denying the allegation. In June 2023, Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was shot dead by two masked gunmen in the parking lot of a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia.
In another very terse and long statement, the MEA earlier said that, since Trudeau had made the allegation, the Canadian government had 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,’ it said.
The MEA said that Trudeau’s hostility to India had long been in evidence.
“In 2018, his visit to India, which was aimed at currying favour with a vote bank, rebounded to his discomfort. His Cabinet has included individuals who have openly associated with an extremist and separatist agenda regarding India. His naked interference in Indian internal politics in December 2020 showed how far he was willing to go in this regard. That his Government was dependent on a political party, whose leader openly espouses a separatist ideology vis-à-vis India, only aggravated matters,” it said.
The MEA also accused Trudeau failing to address Chinese intervention in his country.
His government, under criticism for turning a blind eye to foreign interference in Canadian politics, had deliberately brought in India in an attempt to mitigate the damage, the MEA said. It did not name China which is the focus of an investigation by Canadian authorities into foreign interferences.
“This latest development targeting Indian diplomats is now the next step in that direction. It is no coincidence that it takes place as Prime Minister Trudeau is to depose before a Commission on foreign interference. It also serves the anti-India separatist agenda that the Trudeau Government has constantly pandered to for narrow political gains,’ the MEA had said.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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