India’s home minister Amit Shah sanctioned a wave a violence targeting Sikh separatists across Canada, a senior official in the North American country said.
Mr Shah, prime minister Narendra Modi’s chief lieutenant, was identified by Canadian security agencies as the “senior official in India” who “authorised the intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists” in the country, The Washington Post reported earlier this month based on information supplied by a Canadian source.
The source was deputy foreign minister David Morrison. “The journalist called me and asked me if it was that person. I confirmed it was that person,” Mr Morrison told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.
He did not elaborate how the Canadian authorities had identified Mr Shah.
India was yet to respond to Mr Morrison’s statement or the allegations against Mr Shah more broadly by Wednesday afternoon.
Mr Morrison’s remarks came after Canada this month expelled six Indian diplomats that it claimed were linked to the assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June 2023.
India previously denied the Canadian allegations and retaliated by expelling Canadian six diplomats.
Relations between the two countries nosedived after prime minister Justin Trudeau last year said Canada had credible evidence that Indian agents were involved in the assassination of Nijjar.
This month, Mr Trudeau and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police went public with allegations that Indian diplomats were targeting Sikh separatists in the country by sharing information about them with New Delhi.
Top Indian officials, in turn, were giving the information to organised crime groups to extort, intimidate and even murder Canadian Sikh activists, they said.
India rejected the accusations as absurd. It also denied repeated Canadian assertions that Ottawa had shared evidence to support their allegations against Indian officials.
Canada is not the only country to have accused Indian officials of plotting assassinations on foreign soil.
The US Justice Department recently brought criminal charges against an Indian government employee in connection with a foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader in New York City.
American authorities said Vikash Yadav directed the plot from India and would face murder-for-hire charges. The foiled plot, they said, was meant to precede a string of politically motivated murders in the US and Canada.
Amid freezing relations with India, Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre cancelled a celebration of Hindu festival Diwali at the Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday.
The decision sparked a backlash from Indians in Canada, including the organisers of the event who said they had received no information about calling off the celebration.
Shiv Bhasker, president of the Overseas Friends of India Canada, called the move “discriminatory” and “insensitive”.
“The sudden withdrawal of political leaders from this event, prompted by the current diplomatic situation between Canada and India, has left us feeling betrayed and unjustly singled out," Mr Bhasker said.
The Independent has reached out Mr Shah’s office for a comment.
