India has decided to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Canada by withdrawing its High Commissioner in Ottawa, Sanjay Kumar Verma, amid the on-going row over the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
BREAKING: INDIA WITHDRAWS ITS HIGH COMMISSIONER FROM CANADA pic.twitter.com/f4IiB4u4hi
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) October 14, 2024
It also summoned Canada’s charge d’ affaires in New Delhi Stewart Wheeler slamming Canada for naming the Indian ambassador and other diplomats as “persons of interest” in the killing of the designated terrorist Nijjar.
There are enough clues to suggest that getting pummelled in domestic politics and desperate to stay politically alive, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is risking strained relations with India to become a saviour of Khalistan separatists.
Trudeau is crossing diplomatic limits and bilateral niceties which even Pakistan has not crossed in recent times. His government has on Sunday openly accused the Indian High Commissioner to Canada as a “person of interest” in what is said to be the Hardeep Singh Nijjar murder case.
India dismissed the charge as ”preposterous”. Canada, which has been charging India with allegations over the murder since last year, has not come out with an iota of evidence to date.
The Sunday statement comes in the same week that began with Trudeau briefly meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Asean Summit in Laos. Trudeau said during the brief exchange “I emphasized that there is work that we need to do”.
The accusation against the High Commissioner appears to be the “work” Trudeau referred to.
India said the talk in Laos was not substantive at all. “There was no substantive discussion between PM and Prime Minister Trudeau in Vientiane. India continues to expect that anti-India Khalistani activities will not be allowed to take place on Canadian soil and that firm action, which is lacking thus far, will be taken against those advocating violence, extremism and terrorism against India from Canadian territory,” a government source told news agency ANI.
Shockingly, by the end of the week, the Canadian government informed New Delhi that Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma and other Indian diplomats are being regarded as “persons of interest” in the case of the June 20223 murder of pro-Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
India called the accusation “preposterous” and condemned the Canadian action in the strongest of terms.
“We have received a diplomatic communication from Canada yesterday suggesting that the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats are ‘persons of interest’ in a matter related to an investigation in that country. 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,” declared the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in a statement.
The Ministry of External Affairs described the Canadian allegations as “preposterous imputations” arguing that the matter was linked with the political challenges that the Trudeau government is facing on the domestic front in Canada.
Trudeau faces general elections in October 2025 but is no longer as popular in his country as he was when he came to power. Both regional and economic issues have put him squarely in the opposition’s firing line.
He suffered a serious setback in September when New Democratic Party (NDP), the small political party helping keep his minority Liberal government in power, withdrew its support.
The announcement by the NDP leader was more unnerving for Trudeau because Jagmeet Singh happens to be a Sikh leader and the Prime Minister has been depending on the immigrant Indian community for long.
Trudeau is now forced to find support from other opposition legislators in the House of Commons chamber if he is to pass budgets and survive confidence votes.
Jagmeet Singh said in a video that he was “ripping up” a deal the two men struck in 2022 and accused Justin Trudeau of not being able to take on the opposition Conservatives, who polls indicate are set to easily win an election that must be held by end-October 2025.
India had reacted to Trudeau’s dependence on Jagmeet Singh in an oblique manner. “That his Government was dependent on a political party, whose leader openly espouses a separatist ideology vis-à-vis India, only aggravated matters,” the statement said, in an apparent reference to Jagmeet Singh, who has openly backed the cause of Khalistan and targeted India on numerous occasions.
The relations between the two countries began to sour last year following the murder of Nijjar in June 2023 outside a gurdwara in Surrey, Canada.
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Trudeau had then claimed he had access to “credible proof” of India’s involvement in the death of Nijjar, who had been classified as a Khalistani terrorist by India’s National Investigation Agency since 2020. India dismissed the claims.
New Delhi has for long complained that Khalistani organizations are being allegedly given a free rein by Canadian authorities.
After the Nijjar allegation, Trudeau and Modi met briefly during the G20 Summit in New Delhi last year, but there were no serious discussions between them.
Nijjar was a supporter of Khalistan. He was the head of the Khalistan Tiger Force, which is designated a terrorist outfit in India. New Delhi rejected subsequent Canadian allegations as “absurd and motivated”.
As bilateral ties soured, India had ordered Canada to withdraw more than 40 diplomatic staff from the country.
This February, Canada again raised the ante, accusing India of trying to influence democratic processes in Canada. India’s external affairs ministry had responded saying that the allegations were “baseless”.
The Canadian prime minister, however, lost no opportunity to attack India. He continued to say that the “credible allegations of India’s involvement in the death of Canadian (Nijjar) on Canadian soil continues to stand”.
India responded as strongly, saying that “the growing nexus of such forces with organized crime, drug syndicates and human trafficking should be a concern for Canada as well.”
As things stand, Canada, especially Trudeau, has a lot to explain. First and foremost, his courting of the Khalistani separatists whom he defends as well as his intention to bring justice to Nijjar for his murder.
What happened this Sunday is more than a diplomatic issue. Trudeau’s actions can be termed hostile. He has accused the Indian High Commissioner, who is India’s representative in Canada, of involvement in the Nijjar murder. He has not followed it up with exhibiting any evidence.
The Canadians informed New Delhi on Sunday “suggesting that the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats are ‘persons of interest’ in a matter related to an investigation in that country”.
India’s hard-hitting response
India’s response, hard-hitting and aggressive, said “the aspersions cast on him by the Government of Canada are ludicrous and deserve to be treated with contempt”.
Trudeau is fast losing his credibility because since last September, he has only been making allegations and, as sources in India say, “has not shared a shred of evidence with the Government of India, despite many requests from our side”.
New Delhi has subtly raised the question whether Canada is treading this path deliberately because the leadership is currently caught in a political quagmire which is weakening Trudeau politically.
The message from New Delhi is clear: “This leaves little doubt that on the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains.”