Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: While Canada has named him as a ‘person of interest,’ recalled Indian High Commissioner to Ottawa Sanjay Kumar Verma has strongly denied his involvement in the murder of a Khalistani Sikh leader in British Columbia in 2023.
Verma, and five other diplomats whom New Delhi recalled last week—although Ottawa claimed they were “expelled”—said in an interview on CTV’s Question Period on Sunday that the allegations are politically motivated.
“Nothing at all,” he said when asked if he had any role in the shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar who was killed outside a cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia on June 18, 2023.
“No evidence presented. It is politically motivated,” he said.
Even Canadian Prime Minister Justine Trudeau, who now heads a minority government facing strong anti-incumbency ahead of the next year’s parliamentary elections, has acknowledged that he only had ‘intelligence inputs’ but no concrete evidence in support of his claims.
Still, four Indian nationals living in Canada were charged with Nijjar’s murder and are awaiting trial.
Trudeau and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) recently claimed that Indian diplomats were allegedly targeting Sikh separatists in Canada by sharing information about them with their government back home. They said top Indian officials were then passing that information to Indian organized crime groups who were targeting the activists, who are Canadian citizens, with drive-by shootings, extortions, and even murder.
Verma vehemently denied that India was targeting Sikh separatists in Canada.
“I, as the High Commissioner of India, have never done anything of that kind,” he said.
Verma also condemned condemned Nijjar’s death. “Any murder is wrong and bad,” he said. “I do condemn it.”
He also pushed back on comments made by Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly that compared India to Russia. She said Canada’s national police has ‘linked’ Indian diplomats to homicides, death threats, and intimidation in Canada.
“Let me see the concrete evidence she’s talking about,” said Verma. “As far as I’m concerned, she’s talking politically.”
India has officially rejected the Canadian accusations as absurd, and its External Affairs Ministry (EAM) said last week it was expelling Canada’s Acting High Commissioner and five other diplomats in a tit-for-tat response.
Verma said not a shred of evidence has been shared with India about the Canadian allegations.
The RCMP claimed attempts made earlier this month to share evidence with Indian officials were unsuccessful. Replying to it, Verma said the RCMP had not even applied for the proper visas to visit India.
“A visa needs to be affixed. For any government delegation to travel to another country, you need an agenda to go by. There was no agenda at all.”
Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil. Coordinating with Ottawa, the US Justice Department also clamped criminal charges against an Indian government employee on Thursday last in connection with an alleged foiled plot to kill another Sikh separatist leader, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, living in New York City.
In the so-called case announced by the Justice Department, Vikash Yadav, who authorities claimed directed the New York plot from India, faces murder-for-hire charges in a planned killing that prosecutors previously said was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada.
An indictment is not a conviction, Verma said, adding it will follow its judicial process.
New Delhi has repeatedly criticized Ottawa for being soft on those supporting what is known as the Khalistan movement, which is banned in India but has support among the Sikh diaspora, particularly in Canada.
The Nijjar killing in Canada has since soured India-Canada ties for more than a year, but Verma doesn’t expect it will impact business relations between the two countries.
“I don’t see much impact on non-political bilateral relations,” he said.