Canada has recalled 41 of its diplomats from India in an escalation of a dispute over the killing of a Sikh separatist in Canada.
Canada claims India may have been involved in the June killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar in suburban Vancouver. He was a vocal advocate for the creation of Khalistan - a separate homeland for Sikhs.
India has dismissed the allegation of its involvement in the killing as “absurd”.
On Thursday, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said 41 of Canada’s diplomats have been removed from India, alongside their families, in the deepening row.
She said the move was taken because India threatened to revoke their diplomatic immunity, a step she said would be unprecedented and contrary to international law.
Ms Joly said India’s actions were “unreasonable and escalatory.”
India has also cancelled visas for Canadians and previously expelled a senior Canadian diplomat after Canada expelled a senior Indian diplomat.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last month that there were “credible allegations" of Indian involvement in the killing of Mr Nijjar, a 45-year-old Sikh leader who was shot dead by masked gunmen in June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, suburban Vancouver.
India claims that Mr Nijjar, a Canadian citizen born in India, had links to terrorism, an allegation he had denied.
He was wanted in India under its Terrorist Act for several cases, including a 2007 cinema bombing in Punjab that killed six people and injured 40.
He was also accused of being the "mastermind" behind the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF), a banned militant group in the country.
Mr Nijjar was a leader of a separatist movement to create an independent Sikh homeland.
A bloody decade-long Sikh insurgency shook north India in the 1970s and 1980s, until it was crushed in a government crackdown in which thousands of people were killed, including prominent Sikh leaders.
The Khalistan movement still has supporters in the Indian state of Punjab, as well as in the overseas Sikh diaspora.
