Canada accused India's Home Minister Amit Shah of involvement in the plots to harass Sikh separatists in the country, a move that will further sour the diplomatic ties between the two nations.
Canadian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison on Tuesday told a parliamentary panel that he named Mr Shah in an interview with US-based Washington Post newspaper. The newspaper had claimed that a “senior official in India” had “authorised the intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists” in Canada.
“The journalist called me and asked me if it was that person [Mr Shah]. I confirmed it was,” Mr Morrison said, without providing further details or evidence.
The Indian government has not responded to the allegations or The National’s requests for a comment.
Mr Shah is a decades-long confidant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is considered a powerful political figure. He has been India's Home Minister since 2019.
While home minister of Gujurat state under then chief minister Mr Modi, Mr Shah was accused of ordering the extrajudicial killing of gangsters and jailed in 2010. He was exonerated in the courts on all cases in December 2014.
Canada has accused New Delhi in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia, who was shot dead by two men outside a Sikh temple in a suburb of Vancouver in 2023.
Mr Nijjar allegedly led the Khalistan Tiger Force, a group that seeks the creation of a Sikh homeland called Khalistan in the Punjab region. He was designated a terrorist by Indian authorities in 2020.
Nathalie Drouin, the national security adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, also acknowledged that she had leaked details in this case to the paper. Testifying before the Commons public safety committee, Ms Drouin said she did not need Mr Trudeau’s authorisation to share the information, adding that it is not classified intelligence.
Mr Trudeau last year told the Canadian Parliament that Indian agents were involved in the killing but during a public inquiry this month he admitted that there was “no hard evidentiary proof”.
The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada reported that Mr Shah was also connected to the killing of Sikh activist Sukhdool Singh Gill, who was shot in Winnipeg in September last year.
New Delhi has rejected the claims and accused Mr Trudeau of making wild accusations without any evidence and of damaging the two countries' ties.
Canada has the largest overseas community of Indian origin, with a population of 1.4 million. It has the highest number of Sikhs outside Punjab with about 770,000.
Mr Nijjar’s killing sparked a growing diplomatic rift, with the countries expelling each other’s diplomats after a Canadian announcement that Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma was a “person of interest” in the case this month.
