India expelled a senior Canadian diplomat on Tuesday and accused Canada of interfering in its internal affairs, ramping up a confrontation between the two countries over accusations that the Indian government may have been involved in the killing of a Sikh activist.
It came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government was investigating allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Sikh independence advocate Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
“It’s a sigh of relief for the family and the Sikh community here because from day one we kind of had this idea and knowledge that if anything would happen to him the Indian government would be involved,” said Baraj Singh Nijjar, the son of Nijjar.
“It was just a matter of time for when the truth would come out. It’s finally coming to the public eyes that the Indian government is involved in this. It’s a really serious foreign interference case.”
Niijar was gunned down in British Columbia in June, and Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat. India rejected the allegations as “absurd.”
The dueling expulsions escalate tensions between Canada and India. Trudeau had frosty encounters with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Group of 20 meeting in New Delhi, and a few days later Canada canceled a trade mission to India that was planned for the fall.
The movement to establish an independent Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan, has been a target of the Indian government since the 1980s, when a Sikh insurgency emerged that lasted more than a decade. It was suppressed by a crackdown in which thousands of people were killed, including prominent Sikh leaders.
