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India-Canada’s serious differences over the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar last June have developed into an all out brawl.
The negotiations over the past one year to work together have clearly failed leading to not just broken diplomacy but accusations by Canada through ‘sources’ and statements pointing fingers at India’s Union Home Minister, its premier external intelligence agency, and a gangster Lawrence Bishnoi currently in the news over the murder of a political leader in Mumbai. It is a potboiler that has caught the global media by storm, making headlines across the world.
The tugs and pulls have finally torn away the last vestige of diplomacy, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joining his investigating agency and foreign minister to allege “criminal activities” by India on Canadian soil and thereby justify the extraordinary decision to expel the top six diplomats from the Indian mission, including the High Commissioner to Canada.
India followed by expelling six diplomats from the Canadian mission, including the acting High Commissioner. And said that Canada did not have “shred of evidence” to prove its claims.
Trudeau, however, leaned in and said on Monday that the federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) uncovered “clear and compelling evidence” that Indian government agents have engaged, and continue to engage, in activities that threaten public safety.“This includes clandestine information-gathering techniques, coercive behaviour targeting South Asian Canadians, and involvement in over a dozen threatening and violent acts, including murder,” he said.
Earlier the RCMP said that it found evidence of the involvement of agents “in serious criminal activity in Canada”, including links “to homicides and violent acts” and interference in democratic processes, among other things. And that it had given this evidence directly to the Government of India with a request for cooperation.
Significantly, a detailed report carried by the Washington Post sought to fill in the blanks within the official statements. It carried a Canadian official source based on a report of a meeting with India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval where all evidence was reportedly handed over by the RCMP and Canadian foreign office officials. And that the Canadian investigators pointed to the Home Minister and a senior official in India’s Research & Analysis Wing “who have authorised… intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists.” In the first draft the newspaper did not mention the Union Home Minister but released a second amended story that it claimed was based on additional information from the sources..
Trudeau and his team have repeatedly stated since the assassination that they have the full support of the US and the Five Eyes while India has worked hard on its relationship with Washington even as it has dismissed all Canadian charges outright.
However the truth seems to lie in between. Both countries are important to the US for different reasons but it is one with the Five Eyes in showing zero tolerance for attacks across borders on their citizens. US Federal Prosecutors filed a case against the targeted assassination attempt on Sikh extremist and American citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Former Indian official Nikhil Gupta was accused of orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot. He was extradited from the Czech Republic on June 14 and brought back to the US where he is currently in jail. He has appeared before the American courts pleading ‘not guilty’.
India has been cooperating on the Pannun case, and even while it has denied the charges, the central government formed an enquiry committee that is currently in the US for a joint probe. The US Statement Department released this information in a statement maintaining, "additionally, India has informed the United States they are continuing their efforts to investigate other linkages of the former government employee and will determine follow-up steps, as necessary.”
The Canadians have stepped up the offensive on the Nijjar assassination as per their claims of ‘non cooperation’ by the Indian government; while the US that has received full cooperation is pursuing the case actively in the federal courts. Both will involve the release of information, evidence, statements, reports in and outside the courts. The Washington Post report based on information given by Canadian officials, as itself states, is a case in point as it transgresses official compulsion and goes on to name political leaders along with details of internal bilateral meetings. More such can be expected as the story has still to run its course.
