Justin Trudeau claims Indian diplomats implicated in murders on Canadian soil: report

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made claims alleging that diplomats from India are involved in murders and violence across the Canadian soil.

While testifying before a public inquiry, he said Canada had clear intelligence linking Indian diplomats to “drive-by shootings, home invasions, violent extortion and even murder in and across Canada”.

India had made a “horrific mistake” in violating Canadian sovereignty, Trudeau added.

The prime minister's claims came two days after the Indian diplomats were accused of involvement in “criminal” activities on Canada’s soil by senior Canadian police officials which range from homicide and targeted assassinations to extortion, intimidation and coercion against members of the Canadian Sikh community, reported The Guardian.

The officials alleged that Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner himself, were implicated not only in the high profile killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist who was gunned down outside a gurdwara in a suburb of Vancouver last June, but also connected to other murders on Canadian soil.

Moreover, the diplomats had even worked with a gang run by India’s most notorious mob boss to get their dirty work done, according to the officials.

The latest allegations are a considerable escalation of a diplomatic row that has damaged India-Canada relations, which began last year when Trudeau stood up in parliament and said there were “credible allegations” linking the Indian government to the killing of Nijjar, which is an accusation India rejected as “absurd”.

It is also worth noting that allegations of an Indian campaign of transnational violence and harassment have not only emerged in Canada but in the US, UK and Pakistan since then, where prominent Sikh activists say they have received threats to their lives.