Canada expels Indian diplomats alleging they were involved in violence against Sikh separatists

Six Indian diplomats are expelled after they were linked to ‘homicide and acts of violence’ against Sikh separatists, including Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Members of Pakistan's Sikh community take part in a protest following the killing in Canada of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Picture: AFP.

Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including India’s top official in the country, alleging the diplomats gathered intelligence on Sikh separatists who were then targeted for violence.

India responded on Monday by expelling six Canadian officials from India, including the top diplomat, Stewart Wheeler.

The tit-for-tat expulsions come after Canada told India on Monday that its high commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and the other diplomats were no longer welcome in the country, said an official familiar with the developments. In a statement, India said it withdrew the diplomats because it was concerned for their security.

An investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s federal police force, linked agents of the government of India to “homicides and violent acts,” said Mike Duheme, a commissioner for the RCMP.

The Indian diplomats collected information about Canadians that was used to threaten and coerce them into working with the Indian government, said the RCMP.

Duheme said a dozen members of Canada’s South Asian community have been warned by police about threats to their safety.

India called Canada’s latest allegations “preposterous,” and accused Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of pushing the allegations as a political ploy meant to gain support from Canada’s Sikh community, which is among the largest in the world outside of India.

“Prime Minister Trudeau’s hostility to India has long been in evidence,” said a statement issued by India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

Along with Verma, based in Ottawa, the expelled diplomats included officials based in Indian consular offices in Toronto and Vancouver, British Columbia, according to a senior Indian official.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters about the killing of the Canadian Sikh leader near Vancouver. Picture: AFP.

Monday’s expulsions are the latest flare-up in a diplomatic dispute that began when Trudeau said in Parliament last year that Canada was pursuing “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in killing Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist in Surrey, British Columbia, in June 2023.

At the time, New Delhi called the allegations “absurd” and forced Ottawa to withdraw more than 40 diplomats from India.

Trudeau’s allegations were bolstered in November, when the U.S. Justice Department accused an Indian citizen, Nikhil Gupta, of working for Indian government agents to orchestrate a foiled plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh activist and a close associate of Nijjar who was living in New York City. According to the indictment, U.S. agents recorded Gupta saying that Nijjar was also a target for killings that were purportedly arranged by an agent of the Indian government.

Pannun heads a U.S.-based activist group called Sikhs for Justice that has organised mock referendums in Canada and elsewhere asking whether Punjab, home to some 16 million Sikhs, should be a separate country.

He said on Monday that the diplomats’ expulsion validates his group’s concerns about the Indian government’s attempts to suppress dissent from Sikh separatists.

Officials from the RCMP, the foreign-affairs department and the national-security department met with Indian officials on Saturday in Singapore to seek their co-operation on the investigation.

“That did not result in the outcomes that were expected,” Duheme said in a briefing Monday.

Dow Jones

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