Canada has withdrawn 41 diplomats from India amid a row over the murder of a Sikh separatist leader. Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced this yesterday. Joly told a press conference that India has threatened to withdraw the diplomats’ official status by tomorrow.
New Delhi last month asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited evidence of a possible link between Indian agents and the June killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The activist and Canadian citizen was shot dead in front of a Sikh temple, in a suburb of Vancouver.
India called the suspicion that Indian agents were linked to Nijjar’s murder absurd. Nijjar was not only a representative of the Sikh religious community, but also of the so-called Khalistan movement, which defends an independent country on the territory of India. The leadership in New Delhi therefore viewed the native Indian as a terrorist.