Justin Trudeau has accused India of making a “horrific mistake” in violating Canadian sovereignty, amid an escalating diplomatic row over the murder of a Sikh separatist in British Columbia and allegations of a broader campaign of threats and violence against Indian exiles.
Testifying at a public inquiry into foreign interference on Wednesday, the Canadian prime minister accused Delhi of rebuffing efforts to cooperate and causing the increasingly bitter public feud that resulted in the mutual expulsion of senior diplomats on Monday.
“We are not looking to provoke or create a fight with India,” Trudeau said. “The Indian government made a horrific mistake in thinking that they could interfere as aggressively as they did in the safety and sovereignty of Canada. We need to respond in order to ensure Canadians’ safety.”
In his most detailed remarks on the saga so far, Trudeau said Canada had not wanted to “blow up” its valuable relationship with India.
But he said that after Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia last June, “we had clear and certainly now ever clearer indications that India had violated Canada’s sovereignty”.
Trudeau made a number of explosive statements, including claims that highly classified intelligence suggested members of the opposition Conservative party were “engaged, or at high risk of” being a part of foreign interference efforts.
His comments came in a tumultuous week in which Canadian police accused the Indian diplomats of working with a criminal network led by a notorious imprisoned gangster to target Sikh dissidents in the country. India has rejected the allegations as “ludicrous”.
