New Delhi: The Indian government refused to let the aircraft carrying Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to land in Amritsar in 2018 unless he met with the then Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh to discuss the issue of Sikh separatism in his country, a Canadian newspaper reported Tuesday.
“During the meeting, India’s [chief] minister for the [state of] Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh, handed Mr. Trudeau and then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan, a dossier containing the names of about 10 Sikh activists whose activities the Indian government wanted curtailed, the source said,” The Globe and Mail reported .
Trudeau and Sajjan were not keen to meet with Singh, an unnamed source told the Canadian daily. The former chief minister, in the past, had called Sajjan’s father a terrorist due to his links leading the pro-Khalistan World Sikh Organisation (WSO).
The meeting, however, went ahead, and Singh presented the dossier that contained names including Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who spoke for the creation of a separate country — Khalistan — carved out of the state of Punjab, said The Globe and Mail.
“The discussion with Capt. Singh was ‘not pleasant,’ said the source. Canadian government officials assured the Indians they would look at the list presented to Mr. Sajjan, one that had previously been shared with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS),” it said.
The Canadian daily said that the dossier shared with Trudeau and Sajjan was a part of a “years-long effort” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “press” Ottawa to take action against Sikh separatists, whom New Delhi “views as terrorists.” The dossier was also shared at a time when the CSIS was collaborating with India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).
The starkly different views between New Delhi and Ottawa on the issue was seen in the aftermath of the killing of Nijjar — who was designated as a terrorist by India in 2020 — in June 2023.
Three months after Nijjar was gunned down in a parking lot of a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, Trudeau told the Canadian parliament that Ottawa was investigating the alleged links between the killing and agents of the government of India.
This sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries, with India calling the allegations as “absurd and motivated” and called for diplomatic “parity”. In turn, Canada removed 41 of its diplomats from the country along with their dependents. The Indian High Commission and consulates temporarily stopped issuing visas to Canadians due to the threat its diplomats faced in the country.
The reporting by The Globe and Mail comes merely days after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested and charged three Indian nationals Karan Brar, Kamalpreet Singh and Karanpreet Singh for the murder of Nijjar.
The 2018 visit by Trudeau to India has been viewed as a political disaster. Trudeau was criticised for the “gimmicky” ethnic Indian wear he and his family wore during the trip and had to meet with Singh to be able to meet with Modi, reported ThePrint earlier.
Furthermore, Jaspal Atwal, a suspected Khalistani separatist, and convicted of attempting to murder a former minister from Punjab for official functions during the visit. Atwal was even seen in photos with Trudeau’s first-lady Sophie Grégoire Trudeau in Mumbai.
(Edited by Tony Rai)