New Delhi: Testifying yesterday before an inquiry commission looking into foreign interference in Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated his allegation that the Indian government was involved in the 2023 murder of Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar and other acts of violence in the country and provided an account – for the first time so far – of a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi last September where the two leaders discussed the issue.
CBC quotes Trudeau as telling the commission:
“We had the opportunity of making it a very uncomfortable summit for India if we went forward with these allegations ahead of time. We chose not to. We chose to continue to work behind the scenes to try to get India to cooperate with us,” Trudeau said.
“Their ask of us was, ‘How much do you know? Give us the evidence you have on this.’ Our response was, ‘Well, this is within your security agencies. You should be looking at how much they know.’”
Trudeau said the back-and-forth came to a head during a conversation he had with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the summit.
“I sat down and shared that we knew that they were involved and expressed a real concern around it. [Modi] responded with the usual response from him, which is that we have people who are outspoken against the Indian government in Canada that he would like to see arrested,” he said.
The Toronto Star reported Trudeau as having said that his government had asked Canadian intelligence agencies to look into suspicions swirling around Nijjar’s killing, initially thinking that “this was gang-related or criminal related.” And that the agencies found material which pointed the finger at New Delhi:
“So in late July, early August, I was briefed on the fact that there was intelligence from Canada, and possibly from Five Eyes (intelligence-sharing) allies that made it fairly clear, incredibly clear, that India was involved in this.”
Five Eyes is a reference to Canada’s close intelligence partners, primarily the United States, but also the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
According to the Toronto Star, Trudeau told the commission his government deliberately chose not to go public with any of that intelligence information before India hosted the G20 summit in September. “But Canada’s requests of Indian officials were met with, “‘how much do you know? Give us the evidence you have on this.’ And our response was, ‘Well, it’s within your security agencies, you should be looking into how much they know,’” he testified.
Trudeau said India insisted “‘show us the evidence.’ And at that point, it was primarily intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof. So we said, ‘well, let’s work together and look into your security services,’” but the Indian response was “‘No, no, no, we’re not doing that.’”
Trudeau then raised the Nijjar killing directly with Modi at the G20 meeting hosted by India in September 2023, and he testified Modi responded with India’s “usual response” that it wanted Canada to take action against those India deems pro-Khalistan separatist extremists.
Trudeau said he told Modi his government has “taken action in the past, we continue to take action,” and that “One India is official Canadian policy.”
Speaking about the dramatic developments of the past few days – in which Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including high commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma, and India also expelled six Canadians – Trudeau said his government’s actions and the decision by the Canadian national police to announce that India has played a role in widespread violence in Canada was taken to disrupt the “chain of activities”.
“The decision by the RCMP to go forward with that announcement was entirely anchored in public safety and a goal of disrupting the chain of activities that was resulting in drive-by shootings, home invasions and violent extortion and even murder in and across Canada,” Trudeau told the Commission of Inquiry on October 17. The RCMP is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country’s national police service.
Trudeau said the threat to public safety was so high that the allegations needed to be put forward.
“If the RCMP had its druthers, it wouldn’t have revealed any of this. It’s just that it hit the threshold before it came out naturally in court through our judicial process,” he said, according to CBC.
Trudeau also told the inquiry that information about critics of the Indian government was collected by Indian diplomats and passed on to the “highest levels of the Indian government” and funnelled to “criminal organisations,” according to the report.
Trudeau also told the foreign interference commission that Canada would have preferred to question the diplomats, but they refused to waive diplomatic immunity. “That’s not surprising…But therefore, we had to ask them to leave the country,” he said.
India, which denies the allegations, appears to have seized on Trudeau’s comments about September 2023 to reiterate its claim that Canada has not provided any evidence to back up its claims. In response to media queries about the deposition, the MEA spokesperson said:
“What we have heard today only confirms what we have been saying consistently all along – Canada has presented us no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations that it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats. The responsibility for the damage that this cavalier behaviour has caused to India-Canada relations lies with Prime Minister Trudeau alone.”
The two countries are locked in an unprecedented diplomatic row with Canada alleging that India was using diplomats and the Lawrence Bishnoi gang to perpetrate violence against members of the Canadian Sikh community on Canadian soil. The Washington Post has quoted Canadian officials as claiming Union home minister Amit Shah had authorised this violence.
Last year, shortly after the G20 summit in Delhi, Trudeau had announced that Canada had “credible intelligence” connecting India to the killing of Nijjar. India denied these allegations as well.
This article is originally published on The Wire on Oct 17, 2024.
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