India on Monday said that it had decided to withdraw its High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma and other Indian diplomats from Canada.
This came after New Delhi rejected a Canadian diplomatic cable naming Indian diplomats as “persons of interest” in an investigation in the country.
While the ministry did not confirm which investigation the communication was referring to, NDTV reported that it is related to the murder of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.
“The Government of India strongly rejects these preposterous imputations and ascribes them to the political agenda of the Trudeau government that is centred around vote bank politics,” the ministry said in response to the diplomatic communication received from Canada on Sunday.
Verma is India’s senior-most serving diplomat and the “aspersions cast on him by the Government of Canada are ludicrous and deserve to be treated with contempt”, said New Delhi.
In a separate statement, the ministry said that it had summoned Canadian Charge d’Affaires Stewart Wheeler. “He was informed that the baseless targeting of the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats and officials in Canada was completely unacceptable,” it said.
The ministry said it underlined that in an “atmosphere of extremism and violence, the Trudeau government's actions endangered” the safety of Indian diplomats.
“We have no faith in the current Canadian Government's commitment to ensure their security,” it said.
New Delhi added: “It was also conveyed that India reserves the right to take further steps in response to the Trudeau Government’s support for extremism, violence and separatism against India.”
Diplomatic ties between India and Canada have been strained for more than a year.
In September 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told his country’s parliament that intelligence agencies were actively pursuing “credible allegations” tying agents of the Indian government to Nijjar’s killing.
Nijjar was a supporter of Khalistan, an independent nation for Sikhs that some members of the community seek to carve out of India. He was the head of the Khalistan Tiger Force, which is designated a terrorist outfit in India.
New Delhi had rejected Canada’s allegations as “absurd and motivated” and said they were an attempt by Ottawa to divert attention from the fact that it was providing shelter to those threatening India’s sovereignty. India had also ordered Canada to withdraw more than 40 diplomatic staff from the country.
On Monday, the Ministry of External Affairs said that the Trudeau government had not shared “a shred of evidence” relating to the Nijjar case despite several requests from New Delhi.
“This latest step follows interactions that have again witnessed assertions without any facts,” the ministry said. “This leaves little doubt that on the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains.”
Trudeau’s “hostility to India” has long been in evidence, read the statement.
“In 2018, his visit to India, which was aimed at currying favour with a vote bank, rebounded to his discomfort,” the ministry said. “His Cabinet has included individuals who have openly associated with an extremist and separatist agenda regarding India.”
New Delhi said that Trudeau’s “naked interference” in the internal politics of India 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,” the ministry added. “Under criticism for turning a blind eye to foreign interference in Canadian politics, his government has deliberately brought in India in an attempt to mitigate the damage.”
The diplomatic communication from Canada targeting Indian diplomats is the “next step in that direction”, it added.
In December 2020, Trudeau backed the farmers’ protest taking place in India at the time against the Centre’s farm laws. New Delhi had called the Canadian prime minister’s comments “unwarranted” and “ill-informed”.
The Ministry of External Affairs said that it was not a coincidence that the diplomatic communication came at a time when Trudeau was 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,” it added.
The Canadian government set up an independent commission in September 2023 to investigate alleged meddling by foreign countries, including China and India, in Canada’s general elections in 2019 and 2021.
The Trudeau government has “consciously provided space to violent extremists and terrorists to harass, threaten and intimidate” Indian diplomats and community leaders in Canada, the ministry said. The death threats received by them and Indian leaders have been justified in the name of freedom of speech, it added.
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