Get free Canada updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email every morning with the latest news from Canada.
Canada’s prime minister said there are “credible allegations” that the Indian government was involved in the fatal shooting of a prominent Sikh leader in British Columbia, citing national security intelligence.
Justin Trudeau told MPs on Monday that Canadian authorities are investigating whether “agents” from New Delhi were behind the June killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot dead in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh community became.
“Canadian security agencies have been actively investigating credible allegations of a possible link between Indian government agents and the murder of a Canadian citizen,” Trudeau said. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.”
A top Indian diplomat was also expelled from Canada on Monday, said Mélanie Joly, the country’s foreign minister. “We will protect Canadians at all times,” Joly told reporters. “We expect India’s full cooperation to get to the bottom of the matter.”
Trudeau was in India for the G20 summit last week and told Parliament that he had raised the allegations with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The moves from Ottawa could worsen the already tense relationship between the two countries. Canada’s trade minister last week postponed a trade mission to Mumbai planned for October without giving a reason.
There are nearly 800,000 Sikhs in Canada, many of whom live in Surrey and Brampton, a suburb just outside Toronto. Some Sikh Canadians support the Khalistan independence movement, which would create a sovereign state in Punjab in the northern part of India. The Indian government strongly rejects the movement.
Modi, often described as a Hindu nationalist, spoke to Trudeau at the G20 summit last week. Modi’s office then described the pro-Khalistan protests in Canada as “promoting secessionism and inciting violence against Indian diplomats, damaging diplomatic premises and threatening the Indian community in Canada.”
The Indian government had accused Najjar, a Sikh nationalist, of terrorism and blacklisted him. Bounties were also offered for his capture. In 2016, Najjar wrote a letter to Trudeau calling India’s allegations baseless and saying his activism was “peaceful, democratic and protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
After Najjar was killed on the grounds of the gurdwara – a Sikh place of worship – where he was president, the World Sikh Organization of Canada called his death an “assassination” and called on Ottawa to investigate India’s role in the killing. British Columbia police said last month that they had identified three suspects, but they have not been identified. There were no arrests.
On