<\/p>\n
India and Canada each expelled the other\u2019s ambassador and five other top diplomats after New Delhi said its envoy had been named among \u201cpersons of interest\u201d following the killing<\/a> of a Sikh separatist leader.<\/p>\n New Delhi said it was withdrawing its six diplomats from Canada, but an Ottawa government source told AFP<\/em> that they had been expelled, not withdrawn.<\/p>\n The 2023 murder of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar crashed the country\u2019s diplomatic relations with India after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were \u201ccredible allegations<\/a>\u201d linking Indian intelligence services to the crime.<\/p>\n The expulsion of the diplomats \u2014 the most senior envoys on both sides \u2014 is a major escalation in the row.<\/p>\n India \u201cdecided to expel<\/a>\u201d Ottawa\u2019s acting High Commissioner Stewart Wheeler, his deputy and four first secretaries, ordering they leave before midnight on Sunday.<\/p>\n Ottawa announced similar measures in return, with Canadian police saying they had \u201cevidence pertaining to agents of the government of India\u2019s involvement in serious criminal activity\u201d in Canada.<\/p>\n Nijjar \u2014 who immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2015 \u2014 had advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, carved out of India.<\/p>\n He had been wanted by Indian authorities for alleged terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.<\/p>\n Four Indian nationals have been arrested<\/a> in connection with Nijjar\u2019s murder, which took place in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Vancouver in June 2023.<\/p>\n New Delhi had earlier said<\/a> it had \u201creceived a diplomatic communication from Canada suggesting that the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats are persons of interest\u201d in the ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n It said their envoy, Sanjay Kumar Verma, a former ambassador to Japan and Sudan, was a respected career diplomat and that the accusations were \u201cludicrous\u201d.<\/p>\n New Delhi\u2019s foreign ministry said<\/a> it had told Verma to return home.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have no faith in the current Canadian Government\u2019s commitment to ensure their security,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n India on Monday called allegations it was connected to the killing \u201cpreposterous\u201d and a \u201cstrategy of smearing India for political gains\u201d.<\/p>\n Last year, the Indian government briefly curbed visas for Canadians and forced Ottawa to withdraw diplomats, and on Monday threatened further action.<\/p>\n \u201cIndia reserves the right to take further steps in response to the Trudeau Government\u2019s support for extremism, violence and separatism against India,\u201d the foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n The foreign ministry also summoned Canadian envoy Wheeler, who said that Ottawa had given India the evidence it had demanded.<\/p>\n \u201cCanada has provided credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the Government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil,\u201d Wheeler told reporters after leaving the ministry.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, it is time for India to live up to what it said it would do and look into all those allegations. It is in the interest of both our countries and the peoples of our countries to get to the bottom of this. Canada stands ready to cooperate with India.\u201d<\/p>\n India then announced his expulsion.<\/p>\n Canada is home to around 770,000 Sikhs, who make up about two per cent of the country\u2019s population, with a vocal minority calling for an independent state of Khalistan.<\/p>\n In November 2023, the US Justice Department also charged an Indian citizen living in the Czech Republic with allegedly plotting a similar assassination attempt on US soil.<\/p>\n Prosecutors said in unsealed court documents that an Indian government official was also involved in the planning of that attempt.<\/p>\n The US State Department said today that an Indian government committee investigating Indian involvement in the foiled murder plot against a prominent activist in the United States will meet US officials in Washington this week.<\/p>\n The United States has been pushing India to look into the Justice Department\u2019s claim that an unnamed Indian intelligence official directed plans to assassinate dual US-Canada citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a prominent Sikh separatist, last year.<\/p>\n In an unusual statement on another country\u2019s investigation, the State Department said that an Indian Inquiry Committee \u201cis actively investigating the individual\u201d and that India had informed the US it was looking into \u201cother linkages of the former government employee\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Inquiry Committee will be travelling to Washington, DC on October 15th, as part of their ongoing investigations to discuss the case, including information they have obtained, and to receive an update from US authorities regarding the US case that is proceeding,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n India\u2019s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" India and Canada each expelled the other\u2019s ambassador and five other top diplomats after New Delhi said its envoy had been named among \u201cpersons of interest\u201d following the killing of a Sikh separatist leader. New Delhi said it was withdrawing its six diplomats from Canada, but an Ottawa government source told AFP that they had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2024\/10\/14180722cbfe6d6.jpg?r=183251","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Murder\u2019<\/h2>\n