Nijjar row: India withdraws high commissioner to Canada, expels six Canadian diplomats

The Indian government on Monday said that it is withdrawing High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma and some other diplomats from Canada. It also announced that it had expelled six Canadian diplomats.

The fast-paced developments came after New Delhi rejected a Canadian diplomatic cable naming Verma and other Indian envoys as “persons of interest” in an investigation in the country.

While the ministry did not confirm to which investigation Ottawa was referring, NDTV reported that it is related to the June 2023 murder of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.

Later in the day, India summoned Canadian Charge d’Affaires Stewart Wheeler.

After leaving the Ministry of External Affairs, Wheeler told reporters that his government had “provided credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil”.

He said it was time for India to “live up to what it said it would do and look into all those allegations”.

Shortly after, the Canadian Police released a statement claiming that it had evidence “tying agents of the government of India to homicides and violent acts”.

“Investigations have revealed that Indian diplomats and consular officials based in Canada leveraged their official positions to engage in clandestine activities, such as collecting information for the government of India, either directly or through their proxies; and other individuals who acted voluntarily or through coercion,” the statement said.

The Canadian Police said that it does not usually disclose information about ongoing investigations but was releasing details in this instance “due to the significant threat to public safety in our country”.

It said that over the past few years, there have more than a dozen credible death threats to members of the pro-Khalistan movement in Canada. A team it formed in February has found “a significant amount of information about the breadth and depth of criminal activity orchestrated by agents of the government of India, and consequential threats to the safety and security of Canadians and individuals living in Canada”, the statement said.

The statement said that Canada’s Deputy Commissioner of Federal Policing, Mark Flynn, had attempted to meet with his Indian law enforcement counterparts to “present evidence pertaining to agents of the government of India's involvement in serious criminal activity in Canada” but was unsuccessful.

As a consequence, Flynn over the weekend met with officials of the Indian government long with Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Advisor Nathalie Drouin, and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs David Morrison.

The Canadian Police statement added: “Evidence also shows that a wide variety of entities in Canada and abroad have been used by agents of the government of India to collect information. Some of these individuals and businesses were coerced and threatened into working for the government of India. The information collected for the government of India is then used to target members of the South Asian community.”

The Washington Post, quoting unidentified Canadian officials, reported that Ottawa has “identified at least six Indian diplomats serving who were directly involved in gathering detailed intelligence on Sikh separatists who were then killed, attacked or threatened by India’s criminal proxies”.

According to the newspaper, all six diplomats have been asked to leave Canada.

In an initial statement, India’s Ministry of External Affairs has said it had informed Canadian Charge d’Affaires Stewart Wheeler that the “baseless targeting of the Indian high commissioner and other diplomats and officials in Canada was completely unacceptable”.

The ministry said it underlined that in an “atmosphere of extremism and violence, the Trudeau government’s actions endangered” the safety of Indian diplomats. As a consequence, it was withdrawing them from Canada.

“We have no faith in the current Canadian government's commitment to ensure their security,” it said.

Responding to Canada’s diplomatic cable, the ministry attributed its “preposterous imputations” to the “political agenda of the Trudeau government that is centred around vote bank politics”.

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.

Later in the evening, India announced that it was expelling six Canadian diplomats. They have been given until Saturday night to leave the country.

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.