Canada has ‘political compulsion’ to blame India for Sikh slaying: New Delhi
Police arrested three men on Friday (3) for the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, which triggered a diplomatic rift between Canada and India...
Canada’s investigation into alleged Indian involvement in the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Vancouver last year is a ‘political compulsion’, New Delhi’s foreign minister said after three Indian citizens were arrested over the killing.
Canadian police on Friday (3) arrested the trio for the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, saying they were investigating their links to the Indian government, ‘if any’.
The killing sent diplomatic relations between Ottawa and New Delhi into a tailspin last autumn after prime minister Justin Trudeau said there were ‘credible allegations’ linking Indian intelligence to the crime.
India vehemently rejected the allegations as ‘absurd’, halting the processing of visas for a time and forcing Canada to significantly reduce its diplomatic presence in the country.
‘It is their political compulsion in Canada to blame India,’ S. Jaishankar said on Saturday.
Jaishankar added that India will wait for Canadian police to share information on the three Indian men it has arrested.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Policecharged the three - Karanpreet Singh, 28, Kamalpreet Singh, 22 and Karan Brar, 22 - with first degree murder and conspiracy and said they were probing whether the suspects had links to the Indian government.
‘We’re investigating their ties, if any, to the Indian government,’ Mandeep Mooker, an RCMP superintendent, told a televised news conference.
Jaishankar said he had seen news of the arrests and said the suspects ‘apparently are Indians of some kind of gang background... we’ll have to wait for the police to tell us.’
‘But, as I said, one of our concerns which we have been telling them is that, you know, they have allowed organized crime from India, specifically from Punjab, to operate in Canada,’ said Jaishankar.
Sanjay Verma, India’s high commissioner to Canada, said that they hope to get regular updates from Canadian authorities regarding the three arrested Indians.
‘I understand that the arrests have been made as a result of investigations conducted by the relevant Canadian law enforcement agencies. This issue is internal to Canada and therefore we have no comments to offer in this regard,’ Verma added.
The trio, all Indian nationals, were arrested in the city of Edmonton in Alberta on Friday, police said.
They are accused of being the shooter, driver and lookout on the day Nijjar was killed.
All had been in Canada for between three and five years, police said.
Nijjar, 45, was shot dead in June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population.
He was a Canadian citizen campaigning for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India. The presence of Sikh separatist groups in Canada has long frustrated New Delhi, which had labeled Nijjar a ‘terrorist’.
Canada police probe India link
Canadian police said they had worked with US law enforcement agencies, without giving additional details, and suggested more detentions might be coming.