The growing conflict between Canada and India, explained

A private dispute became public in September 2023 when Trudeau announced in the House of Commons that Canadian authorities were pursuing “credible allegations” linking agents of the Indian government to the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia.

Nijjar, an Indian-born Canadian citizen, was shot to death in his pickup truck in June 2023 by two masked gunmen outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey. Canadian authorities this year arrested and charged four men in the killing.

Nijjar advocated for the creation of an independent Sikh state called Khalistan in the Punjab region of India and organized unofficial referendums on the subject here. India, which has outlawed the largely dormant Khalistan movement, declared him a terrorist in 2020.

Canadian officials have said that they spent the summer of 2023 privately confronting their Indian counterparts, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, about the allegations, which are based in part on Five Eyes intelligence and intercepted communications between diplomats.

India’s refusal to cooperate, they have said, and plans by Canadian media outlets to publish stories on the allegations, led them to make the claims public and reassure Canadians that it was taking them seriously.

“We don’t want to be in this situation of picking a fight with a significant trading partner with whom we have deep people-to-people ties,” Trudeau told a public inquiry studying alleged foreign interference in Canada this week.

Intelligence reports introduced in the inquiry named India as a country that “actively” engages in foreign interference here, seeking to influence elections and working through Indian officials in Canada to leverage its large diaspora community “to shape political outcomes in its favor.”

Canada in 2023 expelled the station chief for India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, in Ottawa. In retaliation, India expelled a Canadian diplomat and threatened to revoke the diplomatic immunity of 41 others, prompting Ottawa to withdraw them.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said this week that Nijjar’s killing was not an isolated incident, but part of a larger campaign of violence directed by New Delhi that has included other killings, extortion and drive-by shootings mostly targeting Sikhs here.

Authorities said they have warned 12 people of Indian descent about threats to their lives since September 2023. At least eight people have been arrested and charged in connection with killings, they said, and 22 in extortion investigations. Many of the suspects have ties to the Indian government, authorities said.

Canadian officials alleged that Indian diplomats here clandestinely collected intelligence on Sikh separatists, both directly and through proxies sometimes acting under coercion. They then enlisted organized crime groups, including India’s Bishnoi gang, to carry out attacks, officials said.

Authorities here identified at least six Indian diplomats, including High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma, the country’s top diplomat in Canada, as participants and expelled them. (Commonwealth nations place high commissions, not embassies, in each other’s capitals.) India then kicked out six Canadian diplomats.

Canadian officials, speaking to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue, said the intelligence-gathering scheme and attacks were green-lit by Modi ally Amit Shah, India’s home affairs minister.

The RCMP statements were highly unusual. Police here rarely publicize such allegations, particularly when investigations are ongoing or cases are before the courts. The RCMP said it was compelled to do so by threats to public safety and because efforts to seek Indian cooperation have failed.

India has called the allegations “preposterous,” “absurd and motivated.”

Modi’s government has long charged that Canadian officials protect Sikh extremists for political gain. Canada is home to the largest Sikh population outside of India, and many Sikhs live in the vote-rich suburbs outside Toronto and Vancouver that are battlegrounds in federal elections.

Canadian officials dispute these claims. They say the government’s policy is “One India,” not promoting Sikh separatism. They will prosecute criminal activity, they say, but will not breach freedom of speech rights.

India says Canada has provided little evidence that New Delhi was involved in these plots. Officials here counter that they have done so, including at a meeting of top security and government officials over the weekend.

After Canadians shared evidence of the Bishnoi gang’s involvement in the attacks here, they said, an Indian official initially denied knowing the gang’s leader, but later conceded he was “known to be up to no good.”

The U.S. Department of Justice in November charged Nikhil Gupta, an Indian citizen and alleged drug and weapons trafficker, in a foiled murder-for-hire plot targeting Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist leader in New York and associate of Nijjar. He has pleaded not guilty.

U.S. authorities allege that an Indian government employee ordered the hit and hired Gupta to arrange it. A Post investigation identified the employee as Vikash Yadav, then a RAW officer, and found that U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that it was approved by the RAW chief at the time.

India has responded differently to the U.S. allegations, saying it took them “seriously” and had set up a “high-level inquiry committee” to investigate. The Indian government agent is no longer employed, the committee told U.S. officials this month.

After months of being dissatisfied with India’s investigation of the attempted killing, the Justice Department this week charged Yadav in the plot. He remains at large.

U.S. authorities allege that after Nijjar was killed, Yadav sent a video clip to Gupta showing the separatist leader’s “bloody body slumped in his vehicle.” He later sent Pannun’s address to Gupta and said his killing was a priority, authorities say.

The row has exploded at an inconvenient time for Western nations, many of which have sought to deepen ties with India to serve as a regional counterweight to China. It has forced Western leaders into uncomfortable debates about how to balance strategic interests with their stated values.

When Canada unveiled its Indo-Pacific strategy in 2022, it named India as a “critical partner” with whom it shared a “tradition of democracy and pluralism” and “common commitment to a rules-based international system and multilateralism.” But planned trade missions have since been put on hold.

The Biden administration has dispatched top officials to confront Indian leaders about the allegations, but has been keen to avoid a wider disruption of ties. They, along with counterparts in Britain and Australia, have urged the Modi government to cooperate with Canada’s investigations.

Greg Miller in London, Ellen Nakashima in Washington and Gerry Shih in New Delhi contributed to this report.