Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Canada wasn't looking to escalate tensions, but asked India on Tuesday to take the killing of a Sikh activist seriously after India called accusations that the Indian government may have been involved absurd.
It came a day after Trudeau said that his government was investigating allegations that India was connected to the assassination. “India and the government of India needs to take this matter with the utmost seriousness,” Trudeau said.
“We are doing that. We are not looking to provoke or escalate. We are simply laying out the facts as we understand them and we want to work with the government of India to lay everything clear and to ensure there are proper processes.”
Niijar, 45, was gunned down in British Columbia in June, and Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat. India rejected the allegations as “absurd.”
India expelled a senior Canadian diplomat on Tuesday and accused Canada of interfering in its internal affairs, ramping up a confrontation between the two countries over accusations that the Indian government may have been involved in the killing of a Sikh activist.
“It’s a sigh of relief for the family and the Sikh community here because from day one we kind of had this idea and knowledge that if anything would happen to him the Indian government would be involved,” said Niijar's son, Baraj Singh Nijjar.
Trudeau had frosty encounters with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Group of 20 meeting in New Delhi, and a few days later Canada cancelled a trade mission to India that was planned for the fall.
The movement to establish an independent Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan, has been a target of the Indian government since the 1980s when a Sikh insurgency emerged that lasted more than a decade. It was suppressed by a crackdown in which thousands of people were killed, including prominent Sikh leaders.
Nijjar was wanted by Indian authorities, who had accused him of ties to terrorism for years and offered a cash reward for information leading to his arrest. Nijjar denied any ties to terrorism and was working with an organization known as Sikhs For Justice to organize an unofficial Sikh diaspora referendum on independence from India at the time of his killing.
One of India's most wanted terrorists, Nijjar, 45, had a cash reward of 10 lakh rupees on his head.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer and spokesperson for Sikhs For Justice, has said Nijjar was warned by Canadian intelligence officials about being targeted for assassination by “mercenaries” before he was gunned down.
Trudeau told Parliament on Monday that Canadian security agencies were investigating “credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen.”
“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” he said.
India’s foreign ministry dismissed the allegation as “absurd and motivated,” and accused Canada of harbouring “terrorists and extremists.”
“Such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it wrote in a statement issued earlier Tuesday.
India has long demanded that Canada take action against the Sikh independence movement, which is banned in India but has support in countries like Canada and the U.K. with sizable Sikh diaspora populations.
