New Delhi: India on Monday ordered the expulsion of six Canadian diplomats and withdrew its own envoy from Canada in response to what it said was Ottawa’s decision to name him and others as ” persons of interest” in an investigation.

India has not given details of the investigation, but relations have been strained since 2023, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had evidence linking Indian agents to the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader on its territory. India has long denied Trudeau’s accusations. On Monday, he rejected Canada’s decision on the investigation and accused Trudeau of pursuing a “political agenda.” We have no confidence in the current Canadian government’s commitment to ensuring their security. Therefore, the Indian government decided to remove the high commissioner and others targeted diplomats and officials,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

He later said the MEA had asked the six Canadian diplomats to leave by Saturday and had summoned Canadian charge d’affaires Stewart Wheeler to protest. The Canadian government has not publicly confirmed that it has named an Indian official as a person of interest.

Wheeler reiterated Trudeau’s accusation on Monday, saying in a statement: “Canada has provided credible and irrefutable evidence of links between Indian government agents and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.”

“Now it is time for India to live up to what it promised to do and look into these allegations.” India has repeatedly said Canada has not provided any evidence to support its claims. “This latest step follows interactions that have again resulted in assertions without any facts. This leaves no doubt that, under the pretext of investigation, there is a deliberate strategy to defame India to political purposes,” the Indian Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

Canada withdrew more than 40 diplomats from India in October 2023 after New Delhi asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence. In June, a committee of Canadian parliamentarians named India and China as the top foreign threats to its democratic institutions, based on feedback from intelligence agencies.

The United States also alleged that Indian agents were involved in an attempted assassination of another Sikh separatist leader in New York in 2023, and said it had charged an Indian national working at the behest of an unnamed official of the Indian government.
India expressed concern after the United States raised the issue, dissociating itself from the plot and opening an investigation.

Accusations of assassination plots against Sikh separatist leaders in Canada and the United States have tested their relations with India as they seek to forge deeper ties with that country to counter the influence China’s growing global market.

The statement continued: “The fact that his government depends on a political party whose leader openly espouses a separatist ideology towards India only makes matters worse.” He further accuses the Trudeau government of trying to deflect criticism of foreign interference in Canadian politics by dragging India into this situation.

“It is no coincidence that this is taking place while Prime Minister Trudeau is scheduled to testify before a commission on foreign interference,” he said. “It also serves the anti-Indian separatist agenda that the Trudeau government has consistently ceded for limited political gains.”

The MEA accused the Trudeau government of providing a platform for violent extremists and terrorists to threaten, harass and intimidate Indian diplomats and community leaders in Canada, citing instances of death threats. “All these activities have been justified in the name of freedom of expression,” the MEA noted. He also noted that people who entered Canada illegally had been given a fast-track citizenship path and that multiple extradition requests from India for terrorists and organized crime figures in Canada had been ignored.

The MEA said High Commissioner Verma is India’s most senior diplomat, with a distinguished career spanning 36 years. “He served as ambassador to Japan and Sudan while also serving in Italy, Turkey, Vietnam and China. The smears leveled against him by the Canadian government are ridiculous and deserve to be treated with contempt,” says the press release.

Finally, the MEA acknowledged that it is aware of the activities of the Canadian High Commission in India that align with the current government’s policy agenda. Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trudeau had a “brief exchange” at the East Asia Summit in Laos.