India calls Canada arrests over Sikh activist murder ‘political compulsion’

Reacting to Indian nationals’ arrest, Trudeau acknowledges fear in Canada’s Sikh community but underscores ‘rule of law’.

Canada’s investigation into alleged Indian involvement in the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Vancouver last year is a “political compulsion”, India’s foreign minister has said after three Indian citizens were arrested over the killing.

Canadian police on Friday arrested the trio for the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, saying they were investigating their links to the Indian government, “if any”. He migrated to Canada in 1997 and acquired citizenship 18 years later.

He was wanted by Indian authorities for alleged terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder, the allegations he had denied. On June 18, 2023, he was shot dead by masked assailants in the car park of the Sikh temple he led in suburban Vancouver.

Nijjar’s killing sent diplomatic relations between Ottawa and New Delhi into a tailspin last year after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” linking Indian intelligence to the crime.

India rejected the allegations as “absurd”, temporarily halting the processing of visas and forcing Canada to reduce its diplomatic presence in the country significantly.

“It is their political compulsion in Canada to blame India,” the Press Trust of India news agency quoted India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar as saying on Saturday.

New Delhi has sought to persuade Ottawa not to grant Sikh separatists visas or political legitimacy, Jaishankar said, since they are “causing problems for them [Canada], for us and also for our relationship”.

He added that Canada does not “share any evidence with us in certain cases, [and] police agencies also do not