Ottawa, Oct 13 (IANS) India’s High Commissioner to Canada Dinesh Patnaik has challenged Canada to produce evidence of Indian government involvement in the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, saying it should have come out by now.
“It’s been almost three years since Prime Minister Trudeau spoke in parliament. Where is the evidence?” Patnaik said in an interview with CPAC’s Open Question, hosted by Marc-Andre Cossette.
“If you have evidence which implicates anybody in India on this issue, we are willing to take action. We are ready to take action. Show us the evidence,” he said.
The interview was posted on October 9.
Then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Parliament in September 2023 that Canadian agencies were pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between Indian government agents and the killing. India rejected the charge as absurd.
Patnaik declined to discuss the case of four people on trial in Surrey. “There are four individuals who are being tried and so it’s now in the court. So I’m not going to comment on it,” he said.
“If the case brings out any evidence that there are people in India involved in it, we will take action against them,” he said.
He cited Operation Hardball, a US-led investigation that he said made arrests in the US and Canada about two months earlier. He said it identified the Bishnoi gang, but “they were very clear on both the American side the Canadian side there though no involvement of the Indian government in this”.
“Any suggestion that a government is involved with criminal gangs is just preposterous,” he said.
Patnaik called the rupture “a blip” and said: “We do not have any geopolitical problems between us. And yet all it took was one politician for whatever reason to spoil it.” He did not name the politician.
He also pushed back on reports that Prime Minister Mark Carney had told The New York Times he could not guarantee India would not commit crimes in Canada. “He said, ‘I cannot guarantee no crime will be committed in Canada,’” Patnaik said.
On Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, which listed India among the main sources of foreign interference in its 2025 public report, he said: “We are very clear. We do not do such things.”
He said the same report described Canada-based Khalistan extremists as the biggest threat to both countries. “It puts India in the list which I hope by next year when they produce their report, India will be removed from the list,” he said.
“Khalistan is not an issue in India. It’s in Canada,” Patnaik said, noting that a pro-Khalistan party once held seats in Punjab but now has none.
Asked about a public inquiry’s finding that India does not distinguish between lawful advocacy and violent extremists, he said Canadians had the right to peacefully advocate for whatever they believe in.
“Politically, we have absolutely zero problem,” he said.
“What we say is don’t bring the negativity, the filth, the terrorist element, the gun running, the drug smuggling, the organised crime, extortion,” he said.
He urged people not to equate Khalistan extremists with the Sikh community, pointing to 45,000 fans at a Diljit Dosanjh concert in Toronto and 15 protesters outside.
Patnaik said the Canadian government had taken “a lot of action” over the past year to dismantle extortion, drug smuggling and human trafficking networks.
–IANS
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