Handed over evidence to NSA Ajit Doval in Singapore last week, claims Canada

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) at a media briefing named organised gangs like the ‘Bishnoi gang’ being used by Indian government agencies. The RCMP assistant commissioner Brigitte Gauvin, while declining to share more details, stated that credible evidence had been handed over to India about the gang targeting pro-Khalistan supporters in Canada. The organised gangs have links with agents of the Indian government, she added. 

The briefing followed India protesting against Canada identifying six of its diplomats, including its high commissioner to Canada, and seeking to interrogate them. India protested by withdrawing all six diplomats and expelling an equal number of Canadian diplomats posted in India.

The MEA spokespersons in New Delhi stated that ‘not a shred of evidence’ had been shared by Canada over the last one year. Canada clearly contests the claim and the reports in the Washington Post suggest that the evidence was shared with the Indian national security advisor himself at a ‘secret meeting’ in Singapore last week. Canada has also claimed that it had served a notice of expulsion to the Indian diplomats.

The investigation into the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June last year as he was leaving a Gurudwara in Vancouver triggered the present investigation. While India believes the Canadian action is politically motivated and designed to seek the support of Canadian Sikhs in the face of the Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s declining popularity, Canada alleges that the activities of the Indian diplomats were prejudicial to the safety and interests of Canadian citizens.

The government of India had made “a fundamental error” by thinking it could engage in “murders or extortion or other violent acts” against Canadians on Canadian soil, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau said on Monday, adding that India’s response had been to “deny, to obfuscate, to attack me [Mr Trudeau] personally, and the integrity of the Government of Canada and its officials and its police agencies”, ever since he made his allegations about Indian involvement in the killing of Mr Nijjar.

The Canadian prime minister also told reporters that last week in Laos he had met PM Modi on the fringes of the ASEAN Summit and emphasised to him, how “incredibly important” the meeting between the countries’ national security advisors [Ajit Doval and Canadian NSA Nathalie Drouin] in Singapore (reportedly held on Saturday, 12 October) was.

It was also in November 2023 that US authorities charged Indian national Nikhil Gupta for hiring an assassin to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh activist named as a terrorist by India, in New York. Gupta has pleaded ‘not guilty’ but the prosecutors told the court that the man engaged by Gupta to hire an assassin on payment of 100,000 US Dollars (approximately Rs 84 lakh) secretly recorded their conversations and handed them over to the US agency he was working for. Sikhs for Justice founded by Pannun was banned in India in 2019 and Pannun himself was declared an individual terrorist in 2020.

Pannun took the issue to court and named Indian NSA Ajit Doval, the then RAW chief Samant Goel and a RAW agent Vikram Yadav, besides businessman Nikhil Gupta, in a civil lawsuit. Last month a New York court issued summons to those named in the lawsuit and asked them to respond within three weeks. India rejected the summons and described them as unwarranted and based on unsubstantiated facts.

However, according to reports India has informed the US now that it has arrested and accused named as ‘CC1’ by the US Justice Department and that he was no longer an employee of the Indian government. Speculations are that CC1 referred to the RAW agent Vikram Yadav. An Indian probe team has also left for the US to apprise US authorities of the progress of the investigation here.

India’s ballistic response to Canada and its conciliatory response to the US on essentially similar charges have raised eyebrows in diplomatic circles.