Canada expelled a senior Indian diplomat on Monday as part of an investigation into what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called credible allegations that the Indian government may have had links to Hezbollah. Assassination of a Sikh activist in Canada. Trudeau said in Parliament that Canadian intelligence agencies are investigating the allegations regarding the Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nigara staunch supporter of an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, was shot and killed on June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia.
Trudeau told Parliament that he raised the murder issue with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 summit last week, and that he told Modi that any involvement of the Indian government would be unacceptable, and that he requested cooperation in the investigation.
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Jolie said the Indian intelligence chief in Canada was fired as a result. “If this proves true, it will be a major violation of our sovereignty and the basic rule of how countries deal with each other,” Jolie said. As a result, we expelled a senior Indian diplomat.” The Indian Embassy in Ottawa did not immediately return phone calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. “Over the past few weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a possible link between Indian government agents and the killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nigar,” Trudeau said.
Trudeau said Canada has expressed its deep concerns to the Indian government. “Last week during the G20 summit, I presented it personally and directly to Prime Minister Modi in no uncertain terms,” Trudeau said. He added: “Any foreign government involvement in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.” Trudeau said his government is working closely and coordinating with Canada’s allies on this issue. “In the strongest possible terms, I continue to urge the Government of India to cooperate with Canada to get to the bottom of this matter,” he said.
Trudeau said he knows that there are some members of the Indian-Canadian community who feel angry or afraid, and called for calm.
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Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said that Canada’s National Security Advisor and the head of Canada’s spy agency traveled to India to meet their counterparts and confront Indian intelligence agencies with these allegations.
He described it as an active homicide investigation led by the RCMP.
Jolie said Trudeau also raised the matter with US President Joe Biden. Opposition Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said that if these allegations were true, they represented an “outrageous insult to our sovereignty.” The Khalistan movement is banned in India, where officials and affiliated groups consider it a threat to national security. But the movement still has some support in northern India, as well as in other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom, which are home to a large Sikh diaspora.
