New Delhi: Canadian officials have told the Indian government that “conversations and texts among Indian diplomats” ordered out of the country yesterday “include references” to Union home minister Amit Shah and a senior official in the Research and Analysis Wing in India “who have authorised… intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists,” in Canada, the Washington Post reported late last night.
This information was conveyed in a hitherto unpublicised meeting between top Canadian security and foreign ministry officials and Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval in Singapore on October 12.
An earlier version of the Washington Post story did not name the minister and spoke only of the involvement of a “senior official in India”. But in a subsequent update, the newspaper identified Shah as the official concerned based on more detailed inputs from its sources.
The nature of these “references” is not known, nor indeed their accuracy, and it is likely that Canadian investigators sought to interrogate the Indian diplomats in order to gather more information about the participation of individuals whose names had cropped up in intercepted communications. India rejected the Canadian request for their diplomatic immunity to be lifted, triggering yesterday’s expulsion of six diplomats including the Indian high commissioner.
While neither the ministries of External Affairs or Home Affairs have responded to the Washington Post story and the Canadian charge of Shah’s involvement, retired Indian diplomats that The Wire spoke to expressed surprise at the possibility of a cabinet minister getting involved in ‘operational matters’, that too overseas.
A former chief of an intelligence agency also told The Wire that Shah’s official domain did not include engaging in the kind of actions the Canadians are suggesting he did.
This is not the first time Shah has been accused of involvement in extra-judicial violence. A decade ago, the Central Bureau of Investigation had charged him – as home minister of Gujarat – with being part of the conspiracy to kill Sohrabudddin, his wife Kauser Bi and associate Tulsiram Prajapati in fake police encounters. He was eventually discharged by the trial court soon after Narendra Modi became prime minister and the CBI chose not too appeal.
On its part, the Canadian side seems even more sure of its case than ever before with Trudeau now speaking of “clear and compelling evidence” in the possession of the police “that agents of the Government of India have engaged in and continue to engage in activities that pose a significant threat to public safety, including clandestine information gathering techniques, coercive behaviour targeting South Asian Canadians, and involvement in over a dozen threatening and violent acts, including murder.”
In September 2023, when Trudeau first went public with the charge of Indian involvement in the murder of Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, he had spoken only of “credible intelligence”.
Since then, the Canadian police has likely gathered a lot more evidence, presumably with the cooperation of the United States, which has also claimed to have unearthed an assassination plot linked to the Indian government targeting a New York-based Khalistan advocate. Indeed, Trudeau made a pointed reference to that plot in his remarks to the media in Canada on October 14:
“I believe that India has made a monumental mistake by choosing to use their diplomats and organised crime to attack Canadians, to make them feel unsafe here at (their) home, and even more, to create acts of violence and even murder. It’s unacceptable.
“From the beginning, as of last summer, we’ve worked closely with our Five Eyes partners, particularly with the United States, where they have gone through a similar pattern of behaviour from India in regards to an attempted extrajudicial killing.”
Nikhil Gupta, the Indian national named in a federal indictment in New York last year, is currently in custody in the US awaiting trial for the attempted murder of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. The indictment also mentioned the alleged role of an Indian government official – identified only as ‘CC1’ but subsequently named as Vikram Yadav by the Washington Post – in the attempted murder plot. According to the Hindustan Times, the Indian government has informed the US that Yadav has been dismissed from government service and is currently under arrest. Based on the information mentioned in the indictment, Yadav was earlier with the Central Reserve Police Force before being seconded into RAW. No details are available about when he was arrested and on what charge.
Retired Indian intelligence officials say it is highly unlikely that Yadav or any other person within RAW could have acted on their own. In any case, the US indictment mentions a video call in which other officials “in business attire” were present during an online meeting between Gupta and the ‘contract killer’ tasked with killing Pannun – who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
The RCMP has accused the Indian government of outsourcing the targeting of Sikhs in Canada to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. Bishnoi is currently being held in jail in Gujarat but is reportedly running his operations from there without let or hindrance.
Even though Bishnoi is wanted for murder in states like Punjab and Maharashtra, the Union ministry of affairs – Shah’s ministry – has issued an order that he cannot be shifted from Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad to other states for questioning. The MHA invoked a little known and little used rule under the Criminal Procedure Code last year to ensure Bishnoi would remain in custody in Gujarat and has recently renewed its order for another year.
In March 2023, he was able to give a television interview despite being in police custody (in Punjab at the time), in which he said, “I am not anti-national. I am a nationalist. I am against Khalistan. I am against Pakistan.”
Reconstructing the timeline of the past week, this is how recent events have unfolded:
- October 10: Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Trudeau exchange brief words in Vientianne, on the sidelines of the Asean summit. Trudeau says he told Modi, “I emphasized that there is work that we need to do… I won’t go into details about what we talked about, but what I’ve said many times is that the safety of Canadians and upholding the rule of law is one of the fundamental responsibilities of any Canadian government, and that’s what I’ll stay focused on.” The Indian side denied there had been any substantive discussion.
- October 12: Canadian officials meet NSA Doval in Singapore and present what they said was evidence of Indian involvement in Nijjar’s killing and other acts of violence targeting the Sikh community in Canada. Canadian officials say they shared information about Amit Shah’s involvement and that Doval made clear that India “would deny any link to the Nijjar murder and any link to any other violence in Canada no matter what the evidence was.”
- October 13: The Canadian government informs India that six of its diplomats are persons of interest and that that their diplomatic immunity be lifted so that they can be questioned by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
- October 14: India rejects the Canadian request and issues a public statement denouncing Trudeau and calling the Canadian allegations of Indian involvement “preposterous”.
- October 14: Canada declares the six Indian diplomats persona non grata and orders them to leave. India says it withdrawing the diplomats for their own safety and also orders the expulsion of six Canadian diplomats.
- October 14: The RCMP chief holds a press conference in Ottawa where he accuses the Indian government of using the services of the Lawrence Bishnoi criminal gang to conduct killings in Canada.
