Canada is not trying to provoke India by suggesting it was linked to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader, but wants New Delhi to address the issue properly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.
Trudeau announced on Monday that Canadian intelligence agencies were actively pursuing credible allegations tying New Delhi’s agents to the shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, in British Columbia in June, in a rare such attack on the world’s largest democracy.
India quickly dismissed the assertion as absurd, and said it was expelling a Canadian diplomat, further worsening already poor diplomatic relations between the two G20 members. In the wake of India’s denial, Trudeau was pressured by the Conservative opposition to go public with the evidence he had.
Trudeau said on Tuesday that Ottawa decided to speak now because “we wanted to make sure that we had a solid grounding in understanding what was going on … we wanted to make sure we were taking the time to talk with our allies.”
