INDIA — India said Monday it was withdrawing its envoy to Canada, because Ottawa was investigating him and other diplomats as “persons of interest”, after the killing last year of a Sikh separatist leader. The 2023 murder of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar crashed diplomatic relations with India after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” linking Indian intelligence to the crime.

The withdrawal of India’s ambassador is a major escalation in the fraught ties between the nations. “We have no faith in the current Canadian Government’s commitment to ensure their security,” New Delhi’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “Therefore, the Government of India has decided to withdraw the High Commissioner and other targeted diplomats and officials.”

New Delhi had earlier said in a statement it had “received a diplomatic communication from Canada suggesting that the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats are persons of interest” in the ongoing investigation. It said their envoy, Sanjay Kumar Verma, a former ambassador to Japan and Sudan, was a respected career diplomat and that accusations against him were “ludicrous and deserve to be treated with contempt”.

Nijjar — who immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2015 — had advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, carved out of India. He had been wanted by Indian authorities for alleged terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder. Four Indian nationals have been arrested in connection with Nijjar’s murder, which took place in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Vancouver in June 2023. (jamaicaobserver)

Photo: Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa…[+]