The six senior diplomats Ottawa ordered to leave the country may not be the last Indian officials to be expelled as Canadian police investigate what they claim was the involvement of Indian government agents in a “widespread violence” here, sources close to the investigation said. told CBC News.

These sources say a network supporting India’s clandestine operations largely remains in place in Canada, although they believe it is likely that some members of that network will now leave voluntarily – and quietly – ​rather than risk being arrested.

Sources have described India’s operations in Canada as multi-layered and multi-faceted, involving many people playing different roles – some voluntarily, others under pressure from Indian diplomats and their proxies.

Indian diplomats themselves engaged in covert activities and recruited others to help them, sources say.

Since 1955, India has required all nationals who become citizens of foreign countries to renounce their Indian citizenship. This means that many first, second and third generation Indo-Canadians need what is called an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) visa to visit India.

Indian diplomats and consular officials have used their discretion to grant or deny such visas to pressure people into carrying out surveillance or becoming informants, sources told CBC News.

A “small part” of a much larger operation

A person close to the investigation described the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar — the Canadian Sikh activist killed in Surrey, British Columbia last year — as “only a small part” of a much larger operation, even if This was both a serious crime and an affront to Canadian sovereignty.

Sources told CBC News they believe a key goal of the Indian government’s operation is to convince Indo-Canadians that violence and lawlessness are widespread in Canada. The idea, they say, is to reinforce the Indian government’s claim that Canada has put Indo-Canadians in danger by failing for decades to crack down on Sikh separatists and criminal activity.

Sources close to the investigation say individuals with ties to the Indian government made extortion demands from Indo-Canadians for sums so exorbitant that they appear to have been intended simply to cover up subsequent acts of violence, including drive-by shootings and arson.

Although the RCMP investigation into India’s alleged covert operations in Canada began before Nijjar’s death, it was given greater priority and more resources after the Sikh leader was shot dead in his van in the exit from a parking lot of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia. on June 18, 2023.

Mounties already suspected Indian government involvement in a murder the previous year and quickly discovered links between the Nijjar case and Indian government officials, sources said.

They said electronic interceptions of communications between the Indian government and intelligence officials in India, as well as Indian diplomats in Canada, quickly confirmed that the killing had been ordered from higher levels of the Indian government.

Sources close to the investigation, as well as Canadian government sources, told CBC News they did not believe such a risky operation – involving not only India’s intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) , but also its foreign service – proceeding without the approval of the highest summit of the Indian government.

India says Ottawa has yet to present evidence

When the US government accused an Indian government employee of being involved in a murder plot targeting US-Canadian citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York, India responded by claiming that rogue agents had invented this scheme of their own. own authority.

India has completely denied any involvement in the conspiracy closely linked to Nijjar’s assassination and has publicly claimed that it had no access to evidence in the case. Sources said Canadian national security officials shared the evidence with their Indian counterparts at a meeting in Dubai last year, at another in New Delhi and, most recently, at a meeting in Singapore last week.

Nijjar was Pannun’s deputy in Canada, part of a global effort to hold referendums on the creation of a separate Sikh state in India, called Khalistan. Although the referendums are non-binding and symbolic, they have infuriated the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Indian officials claimed they were “ambushed” by representatives of the U.S. and Canadian governments acting together.

In what appears to be a message partly aimed at domestic consumption, the Indian government has continued to publicly demand that Canada show it evidence that Canadian sources say Indian officials have already seen.

A multi-level operation

Sources told CBC News that the first wave of Canadian police actions investigating Indian government activities in Canada focused on the lowest, most replaceable rung of the alleged operation: criminal gang members who were allegedly responsible for acts of violence.

The latest expulsions focus on a higher level: diplomats, who benefit from a certain immunity from arrest.

The highest level of the operation is in New Delhi and includes senior Indian government officials, according to sources – individuals who are, of course, completely beyond the reach of Canadian law enforcement.

But there is another level in the RCMP’s crosshairs: the agents, informants and criminal intermediaries who allegedly gathered intelligence, conducted surveillance and acted as liaisons between the diplomats and the gunmen.

Two men will go on trial on November 4 on murder charges in connection with the death of Ripudaman Singh Malik, who was acquitted in the 1985 Air India bombings and shot dead on July 14, 2022, in Surrey, British Columbia.

WATCH: Expelling diplomats is just a ‘starting point,’ says alleged assassination target

Expulsion of Indian diplomats ‘just a starting point’, says alleged assassination target

Expelling Indian diplomats “won’t decimate” India’s spy network, says Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, victim of an alleged assassination attempt foiled by the FBI.

The charges against co-defendants Jose Lopez and Tanner Fox have not been tested in court. The two men are not of Indian origin; Sources told CBC News they have links to organized crime in British Columbia. Fox is also on trial for another murder unrelated to India.

Although sources said they believe the Indian government was involved in Malik’s death, the prosecution’s case is not expected to delve deeper into ties to New Delhi but rather rely on physical evidence against the two accused.

Investigators say they do not believe Lopez and Fox were hired directly by Indian diplomats, but rather through criminal intermediaries.