India has rejected repeated “hard knocks” to avoid a diplomatic crisis after intelligence linked it to the murder of Hardeep Singh Nigar in British Columbia, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified on Wednesday.
Instead of cooperating with Canada’s investigations into its intelligence services’ role in the assassination, India instead responded, Trudeau told the Foreign Interference Inquiry.
He added, “Their response was to redouble efforts and attack Canada instead of taking responsibility or saying: How can we fix this?” “Yes, this was a violation of the rule of law,” Trudeau said.
Reply In response to Trudeau’s testimony, the Indian government said Canada “has provided us with absolutely no evidence to support the serious allegations it has chosen to make against India and Indian diplomats.”
“The responsibility for the damage caused by this arrogant behavior to Indo-Canadian relations lies solely with Prime Minister Trudeau,” he added.
But appearing before the Hoag Commission two days after the RCMP said India was violently targeting its opponents in Canada, Trudeau detailed his attempts to resolve the dispute with New Delhi.
He said that while the killing of the leader of a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023, was initially considered a gang or crime homicide, indications of Indian involvement emerged over the summer.
“In late July, early August, I was made aware of the fact that there was intelligence from Canada and perhaps from allies of the Five Eyes organization that made it fairly clear, reliably, that India was involved in this killing,” he said.
Canada first reached out to Indian officials in August, informing them of the findings and trying to work together “in a responsible way that does not torpedo the relationship.”
Trudeau said Canada could have made things “uncomfortable” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi by announcing the allegations before the September 2023 G20 summit in New Delhi.
“We chose not to do that,” he said.
“We have chosen to continue working behind the scenes to try to convince India to cooperate with us,” he said.
But instead of looking into the behavior of its security agencies, India just wanted to know what Canada had to say about it.
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“At that point, it was primarily intelligence, not hard evidence. “Well, you know, let’s work together and look at your security agencies, and maybe we can get this done,” Trudeau said, adding that the Indian response was: “No, no, no, we’re not.” “He did it.”
At the end of the G20 summit, Trudeau said he spoke directly with Modi.
“She sat down and told us that we knew they were involved, and I explained to them the real concern about the matter,” the Prime Minister said.
“He made the usual response from him, which is that we have people who are speaking out against the Indian government living in Canada and he would like them to be arrested,” he testified.
“And I tried to explain that freedom of expression and the freedom of people to come to our country to be Canadians, or to criticize governments abroad, or indeed to criticize the Canadian government, is a fundamental freedom in Canada.”
“But as always, we will work with them on any evidence or any concerns they have about terrorism, incitement to hatred or anything that is absolutely unacceptable in Canada,” he added.
Upon his return to Ottawa, Trudeau said it was clear that India was continuing its approach of attacking Canada rather than dealing with the issue, and decided to go public with his allegations about India’s role in late September.
On September 18, 2023, as The Canadian Press was about to publish the story, Trudeau told the House of Commons that security services had “credible allegations” about the possible involvement of Indian agents in Najjar’s killing.
“We have decided that it is in the interest of public safety in Canada to let people know that we are aware of these allegations, and that we are following them up,” Trudeau told the inquiry.
The prime minister said he did so in part “to ensure that no one in Canada, in any community, feels they need to take action themselves, and that they must trust Canadian institutions to take this threat seriously and pursue it.”
He added that the Indian government once again responded to the statement with attack and denial instead of cooperation. India also expelled dozens of Canadian diplomats in an act of retaliation, as if to say: “We don’t like what you said about us in the House, and we will punish you for that,” according to Trudeau.
“This was a situation where we had clear, and certainly now clearer, indications that India had violated Canada’s sovereignty, and their response was to redouble their efforts and attack Canada further.”
He said Canada did not want to get into a fight with India, an important trading partner, but he had to defend Canada’s security and sovereignty.
Last weekend, Canadian officials made another effort to ensure India’s cooperation, asking it to lift immunity for six diplomats identified by the RCMP as “persons of interest” in the investigations.
India rejected and launched criticism early Monday, accusing Trudeau of playing politics. Later that day, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that they had uncovered evidence of Indian involvement in a wave of violent crimes.
Sources said that agents stationed at the Indian High Commission in Ottawa and consulates in Vancouver and Toronto are denying entry visas to Canadians who need to travel to India to force them to spy.
Cash payments have also been used to recruit informants. The information they collected was passed on to Indian intelligence services, which used it to plan attacks on Modi’s opponents.
Indian intelligence contracted organized crime groups such as the Lawrence Bishnoi gang to carry out the attacks in Canada, which mostly targeted activists in the Khalistan movement that defends the independence of the Sikh-majority state of Punjab.
Global News reported on Tuesday that police had evidence that the operation was approved by Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man, a hardline Hindu nationalist who serves as India’s home minister.
Asked whether he agrees that violence in Canada is a policy “authorized and directed by responsible members of the government of India,” Trudeau said that is a “very important question.”
“And that is the question that we have been repeatedly asking the government of India to help us get to the bottom of the question of whether there are or could be rogue elements within the government or whether it is a group of rogue elements within the government.” More, a systematic, systematic endeavour, for the Government of India.
He added that Canadian investigators are “somewhat far from being able to unravel the internal machinations of the Indian government, and determine who did wrong or who did this or who did that.”
“That is why, from the beginning, we have called on India and the Indian government to take these allegations seriously, move forward with its own investigations, and work with us to find out exactly how these egregious violations of Canadian sovereignty actually occurred.”
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
