NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India’s ambassador to Canada and other Indian diplomats there are “persons of interest” in a matter related to a Canadian investigation, the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday, citing a diplomatic communication from the country.
New Delhi rejected the “preposterous imputations” of the Canadian claim, saying it is part of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “political agenda” centred around “vote bank politics”.
Ties between New Delhi and Ottawa have been frosty since September 2023, when Trudeau said that Canada had credible evidence linking Indian agents to the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader on Canadian soil earlier that year, prompting a strong reaction from New Delhi, which denied the allegation.
India has repeatedly said Canada has not shared any evidence to back its claim.
In its statement, India’s foreign ministry said that it received the latest diplomatic communication from Canada on Sunday.
“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 added that India “now reserves the right to take further steps in response to these latest efforts of the Canadian Government to concoct allegations against Indian diplomats”.
Canada pulled out more than 40 diplomats from India in October 2023 after New Delhi asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence.
Earlier this year Trudeau had said that he hoped that India would “engage with us so that we can get to the bottom of this very serious matter”.
Soon after Canada’s allegation, the U.S. also claimed that Indian agents were involved in an attempted assassination plot of another Sikh separatist leader in New York in 2023, and has indicted an Indian national.
(Reporting by Krishn Kaushik and Sakshi Dayal; editing by Sudipto Ganguly and Christian Schmollinger)
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