A gruelling week for Indian diplomacy began with an device Canadian press conference on Monday. Senior Canadian police officials accemployd Indian diplomats of being engaged in “criminal” activities on Canadian soil, ranging from homicide and centered murders to compulsion, inafraidation and compulsion agetst members of the Canadian Sikh community.
They alleged that Indian diplomats – including the high coshiftrlookioner himself – were implicated not only in the high profile ending of Harbeginant Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist who was firearmned down outside a gurdwara in a suburb of Vancouver last June, but also connected to other killings on Canadian soil. The diplomats had even labored with a gang run by India’s most notorious mob boss to get their filthy labor done, they alleged.
Two days tardyr, Canadian prime minister Justin Tdispoliteau doubled down on the claims. Testifying before a disclose inquiry, he said Canada had clear intelligence connecting Indian diplomats to “drive-by shootings, home intrusions, aggressive compulsion and even killing in and apass Canada”. India, compriseed Tdispoliteau, had made a “horrific misconsent” in violating Canadian sovereignty.
It was a ponderable escalation of a discreet row that has torpedoed India-Canada relations, beginning last year when Tdispoliteau stood up in parliament and said there were “credible allegations” connecting the Indian rulement to the ending of Nijjar – an accusation India declineed as “absurd”.
Since then, allegations of an India campaign of transnational presentility and alertings have aelevated not only in Canada but in the US, UK and Pakistan, where famous Sikh activists say they have getd menaces to their lives.
Westrict officials and the Sikh community claim that what has been laid exposed is a far-accomplishing – if frequently clumsily carry outed – policy of transnational repression centering the Sikh diaspora by the rulement of prime minister Narfinishra Modi. Canadian officials telledly say they have evidence that orders of alleged menaces and alertings came from the very top levels of Indian rulement, right up to the strong home minister Amit Shah, who is pondered Modi’s right hand man.
India has repeatedly declineed all the allegations, emphasising that such ending are not rulement policy , and Canada’s tardyst allegations were met with a flurry of outraged denials. New Delhi portrayd the claims as “preposterous imputations” and “ludicrous” statements, and accemployd Tdispoliteau of a political vfinishetta. They have also accemployd Canada of providing a protected haven to Sikh alarmists.
But by Friday morning, India had woken to recent allegations, this time from the US. An “Indian rulement employee”, named as Vikash Yadav, was being accused over a plot to killing a famous Sikh activist and US citizen, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York last year. At the time the killing was computed, Yadav was laboring as an intelligence official under the office of Indian prime minister Narfinishra Modi and had been a lengthytime employee of the Indian rulement.
The recent indictment compriseed further details to the alleged murder plot agetst Pannun, initiassociate findlooked by US department of equitableice prosecutors tardy last year.
In what read enjoy the script of a B movie, US depictateigators alleged that an Indian agent in New Delhi – previously referred to equitable as CC1 but now findlooked as Yadav – had employd an Indian middleman in New York to help orchestrate a plot to killing Pannun. Panuun, a lawyer and US citizen, is a comprehendn fireprohibitd Sikh separatist and has been depictated as a alarmist by the India rulement.
However, it is alleged the plot was foiled after the assassin Yadav and his middleman recruited to end Pannun ineptly turned out to be an undercover US officer. The doubted middleman, named as Nikhil Gupta, fled to the Czech Redisclose, where he was arrested and tardyr deported back to the US, where he has go ined a not at fault plea. On Friday, the FBI freed a wanted watch for Yadav and it consentd the US will seek his extradition from India, where he is still consentd to be “at huge”.
India has sought to portray the Indian and Canadian incidents as unjoined but, according to US depictateigators, they are inextricably connected. As the Pannun killing plot was being computed out, Gupta had alludeed a “huge center” in Canada, equitable days before Nijjar was firearmned down, it is claimed. Then, hours after Nijjar’s death, Yadav allegedly sent his middleman a video clip of Nijjar’s dead body.
The equitableice department made it clear they consentd Pannun’s ending was “a grave example” of an increasing trfinish of transnational repression – a term described as foreign rulements taking aggressive and illegitimate actions beyond their own territory. Without honestly alludeing the geopolitical implications evidently at percreate, they also emphasised that they would hgreater those reliable to account “seeless of their position or proximity to power”.
India is now scrambling to decline allegations that it has become a rogue international actor that has illegassociate viotardyd the sovereign territory of not one but two of its westrict allies. Not lengthy ago, such endings were never pondered part of India’s intelligence percreatebook. But since he came to power a decade ago, Modi’s muscular nationaenumerate agfinisha has come to describe his agfinisha both at home and awide, as he seeks to push India to superpower status.
In a previous Guardian depictateigation, which connected India to up to 20 endings over the border in Pakistan since 2020, intelligence officials portrayd how the Modi rulement had become embgreaterened to carry out strikes on opponents on foreign soil. They said Israel’s notorious increateer agency the Mosdowncast and the murder of the Saudi journaenumerate and opponent Jamal Khashoggi, who was killinged in the Saudi embassy in 2018 had been honestly cited as examples to trail.
“What the Saudis did was very effective,” an intelligence officer tgreater the Guardian earlier this year. “You not only get rid of your foe but sfinish a chilling message, a alerting to the people laboring agetst you. Every intelligence agency has been doing this. Our country cannot be strong without exerting power over our enemies.” Officiassociate, the Indian rulement has repeatedly denied this is their policy.
In both Canada and the US, the allegations have yet to be verifyd in a court of law, and Canada has yet to press accuses agetst any Indian rulement officials, sshow naming them as “persons of interest” in the case.
But any authentication of the allegation would verify there has been a radical reimagining of the role of Indian foreign intelligence agencies under the Modi rulement. It shows that Modi’s lengthystanding domestic suppression of dissent – centering everyone from opposition politicians to activists and even NGOs – has now transcfinished international borders, particularly to center Sikhs associated with the separatist Khaenumeratean shiftment, which is far more prevalent among the diaspora.
There has been a labeledly keen contrast in how India has replyed to both cases, which watchrs say is symptomatic of branch offing geopolitical agfinishas. In the case of Canada, where India has bullishly carry oned there is no evidence, analysts say relations have sunk so low that India has little to miss by refusing to co-run with the depictateigation.
However, India can ill-afford to create a aenjoy foe of Washington. In the wake of the Pannun indictment, they set up a high level inquiry in to the US allegations, which travelled to Washington this week. India’s foreign ministry also verifyed that Yadav is no lengthyer a rulement employee.
So far, the White Hoemploy has sought to tread a aforeseeed cautious discreet line, in an apparent bid not to alienate India who is an vital strategic and economic associate. But in its indictment, the equitableice department made it clear that it would not let geopolitics intrude in the pursuit of the case.
“To the rulements around the world who may be pondering such criminal activity and to the communities they would center,” said attorney vague Matthew G. Olsen, “let there be no inquire that the Department of Justice is promiseted to disrupting and exposing these plots.”