Canada and India expel top diplomats in growing rift

What happened

Canada said Monday it expelled six Indian diplomats, including its ambassador, after uncovering clear evidence they were involved in the 2023 murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar and a broader Indian plot to coerce, extort and murder Indian Canadian critics. India denied the allegations and expelled Canada's acting ambassador and five other diplomats in return.

Who said what

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a televised address Monday that Canada's national police now had "clear and compelling evidence" that Indian government agents were engaged in "activities that pose a significant threat to public safety." Canada "will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil," he said. "India has made a monumental mistake." Trudeau's linking of India to Nijjar's murder last year had caused a "rift" that's now a "major rupture," Fen Osler Hampson, an international relations professor at Ottawa's Carleton University, told Reuters.

Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said Canada had shown India the "ample, clear and concrete evidence" for the six diplomats being "persons of interest" in the Nijjar killing, and it expelled them only after India refused to lift their diplomatic immunity so they could be questioned. India's foreign ministry said Delhi "strongly rejects" Canada's "preposterous imputations and ascribes them" to Trudeau's "political agenda."

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India's spy agencies have "long been accused of directing the killings of opponents inside neighboring countries," The New York Times said, and Canada's accusations about the Nijjar assassination were "bolstered by the findings of an American investigation into a similar, though unsuccessful, plot against a U.S.-based Sikh cleric," Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, last November.

What next?

The U.S. State Department said an Indian government committee investigating Delhi's alleged involvement in the Pannun assassination plot will arrive in Washington on Tuesday as part of its ongoing inquiry. Joly pointedly "noted that India is cooperating with U.S. officials and can do it with Canada as well," The Associated Press said.