India trashes Canada for linking home minister to Sikh activist plot

India Home Minister Amit Shah pictured in Jammu, India, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024.(AP Photo/Channi Anand)

NEW DELHI — India officially protested on Saturday the Canadian government's allegation that the country's powerful home minister Amit Shah had ordered the targeting of Sikh activists inside Canada, calling it "absurd and baseless."

Relations between the two countries soured after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last year there were credible allegations the Indian government had links to the assassination of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. India has vehemently rejected the accusation.

New Delhi -- long anxious about Sikh separatist groups -- has increasingly accused the Canadian government of giving free rein to separatists from a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan, in India.

The diplomatic row led to the expulsion of each other's top diplomats last month.

"The Government of India protests in the strongest terms to the absurd and baseless references made to the Union Home Minister of India," Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman of India's foreign ministry told reporters Saturday.

Jaiswal also said a Canadian diplomat in New Delhi was summoned on Friday and handed out a letter to formally protest the allegation. "Such irresponsible actions will have serious consequences for bilateral ties," he warned.

Canada's Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison told Parliament members of the national security committee on Tuesday that he had confirmed Shah's name to The Washington Post, which first reported the allegations. Morrison did not explain how Canada knew of Shah's alleged involvement.

Canadian authorities have repeatedly said they shared evidence with India whose officials deny being provided with any proof. New Delhi calls the allegations ridiculous.

Nijjar was a local leader of the Khalistan movement, banned in India. India designated him a terrorist in 2020, and at the time of his death was seeking his arrest for alleged involvement in an attack on a Hindu priest in India. He lived in Canada, where about 2% of the population is Sikh, for nearly three decades.

Shah, who is 60 years old, is responsible for India's internal security, as the country's home minister. He is widely considered the second most powerful politician in India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shah has also been a close aide of Modi for decades.

Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil. The U.S. Justice Department announced criminal charges in mid-October against an Indian government employee in connection with an alleged foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.

Vikash Yadav, who authorities say directed the New York plot from India, faces murder-for-hire charges in a planned killing that prosecutors have previously said was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada.

New Delhi at the time expressed concern and said India takes the allegations seriously.