Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called a recent claim in Canadian media that connected his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and two other high-ranking officials to the murder of pro-Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year “unreliable” and the product of “criminals leaking”.
Speaking to reporters in Brampton on Friday, Trudeau stated, ““We have seen, unfortunately, that criminals leaking top secret information to the media has consistently gotten those stories wrong. That’s why we had a national inquiry into foreign interference that has highlighted that the criminals leaking information to media outlets are unreliable on top of being criminal.”
This came after Nathalie G. Drouin, Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Adviser (NSIA), said on Thursday that Ottawa was unaware of any such connection.
In that statement, Drouin said, “The Government of Canada has not stated, nor is it aware of evidence, linking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, or NSA Ajit Doval to the serious criminal activity within Canada”. “Any suggestion to the contrary is speculative and inaccurate,” she continued.
An article that quoted an unidentified senior national security official in this regard was published in the daily Globe and Mail on Tuesday, prompting Drouin to make his most recent comment. It was released by the Office of the Privy Council. Similar to India’s Cabinet Secretariat, Drouin serves as the Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council.
A day after India denounced the Globe and Mail report that claimed Modi knew of the purported plot to kill Khalistani insurgent Nijjar as a “smear campaign,” Drouin provided an explanation.
Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesman for the External Affairs Ministry, stated that although they typically do not respond to news stories, absurd remarks given to a newspaper by a Canadian government source should be treated with the disdain they merit. Smear efforts like this one, which he noted, merely exacerbated already fragile relations.
After Canada connected six diplomats and officials, including High Commissioner Sanjay Verma, to violent criminal activities in India in October, relations between the two countries deteriorated. Verma and the other five officers were recalled after India denied the accusations. Stewart Wheeler, the acting High Commissioner, was one of six Canadian diplomats expelled by India.
Prior to those accusations, Global Affairs Canada sent a letter to New Delhi asking for the diplomatic immunity of six Indian officials stationed in Canada to be waived because they were “persons of interest” in cases involving serious criminal behavior.
Last June 18, Nijjar was murdered in Surrey, British Columbia.
Tensions between New Delhi and Ottawa were triggered by Trudeau’s claims in September 2023 that Indian government agents were responsible for Nijjar’s murder. After New Delhi called Canada’s decision to interrogate six Indian officials, including Verma, in relation to violent criminal activities in the nation “preposterous,” bilateral relations deteriorated.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) filed charges in October after the diplomats left, claiming a link between New Delhi and violent criminal activity in the nation.
That was alluded to in Drouin’s statement on Thursday, which said, “On October 14th, because of a significant and ongoing threat to public safety, the RCMP and officials took the extraordinary step of making public accusations of serious criminal activity in Canada perpetrated by agents of the Government of India.”
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