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CANADA’S PRIME Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday acknowledged that he had only intelligence and no “hard evidentiary proof” when he alleged the involvement of Indian government agents in the killing of Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year. Also, in his strongest comments on the issue, he said “the Indian government made a horrific mistake in thinking that they could interfere as aggressively as they did in the safety and sovereignty of Canada”. His remarks, while testifying before the public inquiry into foreign interference in federal electoral processes and democratic institutions, came days after a sharp escalation in the diplomatic row between the two countries, leading to the exits of diplomats on both sides. “I was briefed on the fact that there was intelligence from Canada, and possibly from Five Eyes allies that made it fairly clear, incredibly clear, that India was involved in this… Agents of the Government of India were involved in the killing of a Canadian on Canadian soil,” he said. Trudeau said his government’s immediate approach was to engage with the Indian government. He said the Indian side asked for evidence “and our response was, well, it’s within your security agencies”. But the Indian side insisted on the evidence, he said. “And at that point, it was primarily intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof. So we said, well, let’s work together and look into your security services and maybe we can get that done,” he said. Nijjar was gunned down in Surrey, British Columbia, in June last year. In September 2023, Trudeau told the House of Commons that Canada had credible evidence on potential involvement of Indian government officials in the killing. Recalling the G20 summit hosted by India in September last year, he said Canada “had the opportunity of making it a very uncomfortable summit” for India if it went public with these allegations. “We chose not to. We chose to continue to work behind the scenes to try and get India to cooperate with us,” he said. He said he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the G20 summit and shared that “we knew that they were involved and expressed a real concern around it. He responded with the usual response from him, which is that we have people who are outspoken against the Indian government living in Canada that he would like to see arrested.” Trudeau said he tried to explain that there is freedom of speech in Canada to criticise governments overseas or indeed to criticise a Canadian government. “But as always, we would work with them on any evidence or any concerns they have around terrorism or incitement to hate or anything that is patently unacceptable,” he said. “We launched investigations. The Indian response to these allegations and our investigations was to double down on attacks against this government, attacks against this government’s integrity, attacks against Canada in general, but also to arbitrarily eject dozens of Canadian diplomats from India,” he said. “This was a situation in which we had clear, and certainly now even clearer, indications that India had violated Canada’s sovereignty,” he said. Trudeau alleged that Indian diplomats were collecting information on Canadians who were in disagreement with the Modi government and passing it to the highest levels within the Indian government and criminal organisations like the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. “…It was the RCMP determination that that chain, or that sequence, that scheme, needed to be disrupted and going public on Monday as they did,” he said. On Monday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had claimed that the Bishnoi gang was connected to Indian government agents. Rejecting Canada’s allegations as “preposterous”, India has maintained that Ottawa has not shared a “shred of evidence”. With Canada naming Indian diplomats as “persons of interest” in the Nijjar probe earlier this week, India has warned that it “reserves the right to take further steps in response”. An MEA statement said: “What we have heard today only confirms what we have been saying consistently all along – Canada has presented us no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations that it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats. The responsibility for the damage that this cavalier behaviour has caused to India-Canada relations lies with Prime Minister Trudeau alone.” — With PTI Divya A reports on travel, tourism, culture and social issues - not necessarily in that order - for The Indian Express. She's been a journalist for over a decade now, working with Khaleej Times and The Times of India, before settling down at Express. Besides writing/ editing news reports, she indulges her pen to write short stories. As Sanskriti Prabha Dutt Fellow for Excellence in Journalism, she is researching on the lives of the children of sex workers in India. ... Read More None
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