New Delhi: In a statement that is bound to further roil relations with India, Canadian deputy foreign affairs minister David Morrison said on Tuesday (October 29) that he had confirmed to a US newspaper that Indian home minister Amit Shah was “involved” in the plot to kill Canadian nationals.
He made the disclosure at a hearing by the Canadian parliamentary committee on public safety and national security.
The Washington Post had on October 14 cited unnamed Canadian officials as saying they had told the Indian government that “conversations and texts among Indian diplomats” ordered out of the country that day “include references” to Shah and a senior official in the Research and Analysis Wing “who have authorised … intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists” in Canada.
The article in the US newspaper followed a widening diplomatic row, a year after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged that agents of the Indian government were involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a pro-Khalistan Canadian national proscribed as a terrorist by India.
On October 14, India announced that Canada had informed it that six of its diplomats, including high commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma, were “persons of interests” in a criminal investigation.
The Indian external affairs ministry summoned the Canadian charge d’affaires to announce that New Delhi was withdrawing the six diplomats and declaring six Canadian diplomats as personae non gratae.
At that same time, Canada also stated that expulsion notices had been given to the six Indian diplomats in Ottawa.
That day, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) held a press briefing to say that its investigations were beyond the Nijjar killing and involved evidence of Indian diplomats allegedly using members of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang in criminally intimidating Canadian nationals of Indian origin.
This information was reportedly shared during a previously unreported meeting in Singapore on October 12 between senior Canadian security and foreign ministry officials and Indian national security adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval.
In an earlier version of the Washington Post article, Shah was not named, and it only referenced the involvement of a “senior official in India”. However, in a later update several hours after initial publication, the newspaper identified the Union home minister as the official in question, drawing on more detailed information from its sources.
Nathalie Drouin, national security and intelligence advisor (NSIA) to the prime minister, explained in her opening remarks to the parliamentary committee that speaking to the Post on “background” was part of a media strategy to counter “disinformation” from the Indian government.
During the televised hearing, Conservative Party MP Raquel Dancho questioned Canada’s decision to share information with the Washington Post.
“You can confirm then that the information about, for example, the Indian home affairs minister and his alleged involvement in these crimes in Canada, that was not released in Canada, however [to the media]? That was only released in the Washington Post …?” she asked.
Drouin responded that they did not volunteer this information to the newspaper on their own. “So this is not information we provided to the journalist,” she said.
When Dancho asked Morrison, the Canadian deputy foreign minister, the same question, he said, “The journalist called me and asked me if it was that person. I confirmed it was that person.”
When the MP followed up with, “Oh, you confirmed,” Morrison elaborated, “So, this is a journalist who’s written extensively on this topic… journalist that has various sources. He asked me if that was one of the people and I confirmed that it was”.
The two Canadian senior officials were joined by other officials, including the RCMP commissioner, at the hearing, where they fielded questions related to “Electoral Interference and Criminal Activities in Canada by Agents of the Government of India”.
The Indian government described the allegations as “preposterous”, asserting that they were part of Trudeau’s personal political agenda to secure the “vote banks” of the Sikh community.
In her written remarks, Drouin listed out meetings between her predecessor and herself with Doval since August 2023.
“Specifically, we have had engagement between Canada’s NSIA, my predecessor, myself or other Canadian senior officials from the GAC [Global Affairs Canada], CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] or PCO [Privy Council Office] and India’s national security adviser on six occasions, namely August and September 2023 in New Delhi, November 2023 in Dubai, December 2023 in Saudi Arabia, January 2024 in London and March 2024 in Dubai and in May 2024 when the RCMP made an arrest in the case,” she said.
She stated that in late August this year, the RCMP approached the foreign ministry.
RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme (front, first from left), Tricia Geddes (associate deputy minister of public safety), Drouin (third) and Morrison (fourth) at the hearing. Photo: Screenshot from video of hearing.
The “evidence”, she said, showed the collection of information using “coercion and threats” on Canadian nationals by Indian diplomats and consular officials.
“This information is then shared with senior levels of the government of India who then direct the commission of serious criminal activities against Indo-Canadians to the kinetic views of the Lawrence Bishnoi organised crime network,” she said.
The Canadian NSIA alleged that the “serious crimes committed in Canada include homicides, assassination plots, perpetrated extortions and other extreme violence.”
She claimed that India had first “used an administrative technicality” to block RCMP officials from travelling to meet their Indian counterparts in order to present the “evidence” for the allegations. India had pointed out that Canada had applied for a visa for the officials at an extremely short notice.
“Second, the RCMP travelled to Washington on October 10, [and] while the Indian officer confirmed the meeting, they never showed up to signal the seriousness of the matter.”
At the October 12 meeting with Doval in Singapore, she said that the RCMP deputy commissioner “spoke to and demonstrated a body of evidence that established clear links between agents of the government of India and violent criminal activities taking place in Canada.”
The Indian side denied all the allegations, but, she claimed, it was decided that another meeting would take place on October 14 after agreeing that their October 12 meeting would be kept confidential on Doval’s request.
“Instead, the government of India chose to not respect our agreement and go public the next day, Sunday (October 13) and use again their false narrative that Canada has not shown any evidence by going public. The government of India clearly signalled that they were not going to be accountable or take the necessary actions we needed to ensure public safety,” she said, alleging that this was the trigger to expel the Indian diplomats.
‘India denied everything we presented’
The Canadian NSIA also stated that at the Singapore meeting, India had been provided with “options” on taking actions.
“We provided three options to the India national security adviser that would allow us to address public safety and accountability,” said Drouin.
The first was to waive the immunity of the diplomat and consular officials to allow Canadian police to question them, she told the Canadian parliamentary panel.
Another option was for India to “first stopping the illegal activities in Canada, including directing Bishnoi to cease and desist”. It was also proposed that India could issue a public statement to “adopt a mechanism to look into the modest operandi within India as they have done with the USA case”.
India set up that committee to investigate US allegations of New Delhi’s involvement in a murder-for-hire plot against prominent US-Canadian Khalistani seperatist Gurpatwant Pannun in New York last year
Dourin added that India was also asked to recall its specific diplomats and announce a new India Canada high level dialogue on countering extremism.
The senior Canadian government official stated that that it had been decided that if India did not agree to the “accountability” options, then the Indian diplomats would be declared persona non grata.
“While during the meeting, our counterpart did not refuse to look into the accountability option, he refused to acknowledge any links and deny everything we presented,” she reiterated.
After India did not cooperate and went public, Dourin stated that Canada provided “non-classified information” to the Post.
“The government of India has from the beginning accused Canada of engaging in a politically motivated investigation and using the Canadian media to further this, this is clearly not the case. However, we were prepared for this accusation to resurface. Therefore, we made a strategic decision to engage a respected international news outlet that had already published on the subject to ensure the record was straight and that our side of the story would be widely heard in the interest of public safety and disrupting a network, fuelling violence in Canadian communities,” she said.
Despite queries from The Wire and other media, Doval’s office has so far not responded to the Canadian account of what transpired in Singapore.
