Indian government agents carry out criminal activity in Canada, RCMP says | Tensions between India and Canada

Canada expelled six Indian diplomats on Monday, including the high commissioner, while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced they had evidence of violent criminal activity linked to the Indian government.

In recent years, agents of the Indian government have orchestrated on Canadian soil homicides, extortion and other criminal acts of violencealerted the GRCat a press conference.

Federal police investigations have also revealed that Indian diplomats and consular officers based in Canada took advantage of their official position to engage in clandestine activities, such as gathering intelligence for the Indian governmentsaid Monday the commissioner of the GRCMichael Duheme.

This information was then used to target members of the South Asian communityaccording to the federal police.

Despite the creation of a multidisciplinary team of GRC last February to stop this violence, the misdeeds continueaccording to Mr. Duheme, who deplores the lack of collaboration from New Delhi in these investigations.

We believe that we have reached a point where it is imperative to confront the Government of India and inform the public of very serious findings that we have made in our investigations.

Over the weekend, the deputy commissioner of the GRC also met with representatives of the Government of India to present them with evidence of the involvement of Indian government agents in serious criminal activities.

Expulsion of diplomats

The investigations of the GRC made it possible to specifically target six Indian diplomats in Canada who allegedly participated in gathering information about Sikh separatists who were killed, attacked or threatened by criminal proxies.

These six Indian diplomats were declared on Monday persona non grata steam Ottawa.

India, which had earlier declared that it was withdrawing its diplomats, said in a statement that it rejected these absurd imputations.

India now reserves the right to take further action in response to these latest efforts by the Canadian government to concoct allegations against Indian diplomatswe read in the press release, New Delhi not indicating the nature of these measures.

There is no doubt that under the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of denigrating India for political purposes.

The statement refers to certain allegations made by the Prime Minister of Canada in September 2023, when Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons to say that India was suspected of being involved in the shooting death of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, England. British Columbia.

Relations between Canada and India have deteriorated considerably since these comments made by Justin Trudeau in 2023. Ottawa, for example, withdrew from negotiations for a free trade agreement with India.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of a Sikh temple assassinated in June 2023 in Vancouver, campaigned for the creation of a state, Khalistan, which would notably include Punjab, a Sikh-majority region shared between India and Pakistan. He was considered a terrorist by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), an agency of the Indian government dedicated to combating terrorism.

New Delhi had already accused Canada of laxity, saying it had become a haven for terrorists, extremists and organized crime. Justin Trudeau openly espouses a separatist ideology towards Indiathe Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs further advanced on Monday.

At the time of writing, the office of the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not provided a statement to Radio-Canada.

With information from The Canadian Press