OTTAWA — The RCMP went public with stunning allegations that Indian diplomats and consular officials in Canada are tied to murders, violence, intimidation and threats against Canadians as an extraordinary diplomatic split between India and Canada exploded on Thanksgiving Monday.
The two countries each expelled six diplomats as the Mounties disclosed their suspicions in a news conference after efforts by top Canadian officials, in Washington and Singapore, failed over the past week to resolve an impasse in their investigations.
RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme told reporters that the situation required immediate public disclosure in an effort to disrupt what is going on.
“It’s not our normal process to publicly disclose information about ongoing investigations in an effort to preserve their integrity,” Duheme said.
“However, we feel it is necessary to do so at this time due to the significant threat to public safety in our country.”
So far, Duheme said, eight people have been charged in Canada with homicides — although he refused to specify the number of Canadian deaths or the time frame involved.
And 22 individuals stand charged with extortion, or acts of intimidation, coercion, threats and harassment that Canadian authorities now see as likely connected to agents acting at the Indian government’s direction. Police have given warnings to 13 Canadians since last September that they are potential targets of Indian agents. Some have received multiple threats, and they have been on the rise in recent weeks, police say.
More explosive is the allegation that Indian government officials posted in Canada are “directly” linked to the violence.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference late Monday that the RCMP has “clear and compelling evidence that agents of the government of India have engaged in and continue to engage in activities that pose a significant threat to public safety. This includes clandestine information gathering techniques, coercive behaviour targeting South Asian Canadians, and involvement in over a dozen threatening and violent acts, including murder. This is unacceptable.”
The tumult began more than a year ago, after the June 2023 shooting death of a Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, slain outside a Surrey gurdwara. In September of that year, Trudeau first went public with concerns that “agents of India” were believed connected to the killing, calling on India then to co-operate with Canadian investigators.
At the time it led to tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions as India denied any responsibility.
The Star has now learned another suspicious Canadian death possibly linked to Indian government officials is that of a Winnipeg man, Sukhdool Singh Gill, also slain in 2023.
Two senior security and government officials told the Star that Ottawa’s efforts to engage with the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Nijjar affair have been ongoing in the past year.
Behind the scenes, things ramped up in earnest about six weeks ago.
The RCMP had by then determined a pattern in a series of investigations in a number of cities across Canada, the sources said: it appeared Indian diplomats and consular officials in Canada were conveying information about the movements and activities of certain Canadians back to Indian intelligence officials in India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, known as RAW.
According to the sources, speaking confidentially in order to discuss Canada’s findings, that information appeared to be then conveyed to a criminal gang in India, whose leader Lawrence Bishnoi is in Indian prison custody but uncharged, and in turn passed on to individuals in Canada who police allege are “agents of India” acting to intimidate, threaten and even kill Canadians.
The prime minister, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters on Monday that the primary targets of the interference have been Sikh Canadians, but said the threats went beyond that community to include other South Asian Canadians. All three said they have shared the information with counterparts in the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance that includes the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand.
In the year since Trudeau first revealed that Canada’s national security officials were investigating an Indian government connection to the Nijjar killing, there were several unsuccessful attempts to persuade India to co-operate with Canadian investigators.
In November after U.S. authorities laid an indictment in a separate case alleging complicity by Indian government officials in attempts to kill a Sikh separatist figure living in New York City, Trudeau’s former national security adviser Jody Thomas and deputy foreign affairs minister David Morrison travelled to Dubai to meet with their Indian counterparts on neutral ground.
Thomas’ replacement Nathalie Drouin went again to Dubai in February to meet her counterpart, Modi’s national security adviser Ajit Doval, and seek co-operation.
Last week, Ottawa’s efforts intensified.
Sources said India had first agreed to meet but then denied visas to RCMP personnel to go to India last week to share police evidence. Then Indian law enforcement officials agreed to meet with RCMP deputy commissioner Mark Flynn at the Canadian embassy in Washington.
The Indian officials had agreed to a meeting Thursday at the embassy in D.C., sources said, but called to say they would be late, then didn’t show up and didn’t call back.
That’s when the RCMP and the federal government officials realized it there would be no meeting.
The Canadians then switched plans, dispatching Flynn to Singapore, where Morrison and Drouin were to meet Saturday with Doval and other Indian officials.
In Laos, on Friday Trudeau met on the sidelines with Modi, telling reporters he had impressed upon him how important that Saturday meeting was.
On the Canadian side, sources said, Drouin, Morrison and Flynn had three requests of the Indian delegation: Ottawa wanted India to waive diplomatic and consular immunity for its six officials, including High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma — whom India described as its most senior serving diplomat abroad. It wanted India to include Canada in its ongoing review of the allegations in the U.S. of complicity by Indian officials, and it wanted New Delhi to withdraw the six diplomats.
The sources said the Indian delegation requested their meeting be kept confidential, and both sides agreed to reconnect in 48 hours. However, by the time the Canadian officials, en route back to Ottawa, landed in London, sources said, the Indians violated that agreement by leaking the meeting publicly to Indian media, and selectively spinning that there had been no police evidence presented despite the presence of the RCMP’s Flynn, in charge of national security investigations.
“We spent five hours showing the evidence,” said one source.
With the RCMP concerned about public safety, Trudeau’s government then moved to declare the six diplomats immediately “persona non grata” — sending notice by email to the Indian government, sources said.
In Delhi, the Indian external affairs ministry summoned Canada’s High Commissioner Stewart Wheeler and said six Canadians, including him, would be expelled. That leaves a Canadian delegation of 15 in that country.
In a press release, the ministry blasted the moves by the Trudeau government as politically motivated.
Wheeler, speaking to media in Delhi, said “The government of Canada has done what India has long been asking for. Canada has provided credible irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.
“Now it is time for India to live up to what it said it would do and look into those allegations. It is in the interest of both our countries, and the peoples of our countries to get to the bottom of this. Canada stands ready to co-operate with India.”
Among the Indian officials expelled from Canada Monday are six diplomats and consular officials, including Verma. There are different immunities for diplomats and consular personnel. Not all those ordered out were based in Ottawa, although Canadian officials did not provide a breakdown of where the Indian personnel were based. India continues to maintain consulate offices in Toronto and Vancouver.
Canada had closed its consulate offices outside India’s capital city last year.
With Monday’s six expulsions, India has 15 diplomatic personnel remaining in Ottawa, and an unspecified number more in its consulate offices.
Canada says it is not barring India from replacing those who have been ordered to leave, sources said.
