New Delhi: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that Ottawa intends to disclose evidence concerning possible connections between the killing of a Canadian citizen and the Indian government, adopting a similar approach to the United States “when we reach those points in the investigation”.
Last week, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said in Parliament that India had responded differently to the allegations made by Canada and the United States, as the former had not provided any inputs unlike Washington.
“Insofar as the US is concerned, certain inputs were given to us as part of our security cooperation with the United States. Those inputs were of concern to us because they [were] related to the nexus of organised crime, trafficking and other matters,” he said in the Rajya Sabha last Thursday.
Jaishankar claimed that Canada had not provided any “specific evidence or inputs”. “So the question of equitable treatment to two countries, one of whom has provided input and one of whom has not, does not arise,” he said.
In an interview to Canadian Press, Trudeau expressed Canada’s intention to unveil evidence in a manner similar to the US when “we reach those points in the investigation”.
He also pointed out US investigators initiated their attempted murder probe much earlier.
“Canada is investigating a murder and there are different stakes involved in that and our justice system has different processes,” he said. “But that is unfolding.”
He was referring to the attempted assassination plot on a US-based Sikh separatist as laid out in court papers filed by US investigators. The Canadian government has accused Indian government agents of being involved in the June 18 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was declared as a terrorist by India.
In response to the allegations, India had stopped all visa services for Canadian nationals and demanded parity in diplomatic representation, which led to the withdrawal of 41 diplomats.
There was no such strong reaction from India to the US administration about the plot allegations. Instead, New Delhi set up a committee of inquiry after the US repeatedly called for accountability.
Trudeau mentioned that he decided to make the announcement on September 18 in the lower chamber of the Canadian parliament because he anticipated that the information would inevitably be leaked by the media. The Globe and Mail was already ready to report on it.
The Canadian prime minister said that his public statement followed weeks of “quiet diplomacy”, which included a private 16-minute conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 Summit in New Delhi. He admitted that those talks were not constructive.
“We felt that all the quiet diplomacy and all the measures that we put in – and ensured that our security services put in to keep people safe in the community – needed a further level of deterrence, perhaps of saying publicly and loudly that we know, or we have credible reasons to believe, that the Indian government was behind this,” he said. “And therefore put a chill on them continuing or considering doing anything like this.”
Trudeau additionally mentioned that Canada alerted India to the inevitable disclosure of the information. He also stated that India was told that while Canada had managed to keep things on the diplomatic level till the G20 Summit, it did not have much control beyond that.