India had at least 26 extradition requests pending with Canada, the South Asian nation’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, amid a diplomatic row between the two countries.
“These are over the last decade or more,” India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters during a weekly media briefing.
Bilateral relations between the two nations have plunged to a new low this week after Ottawa linked India to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada.
In tit-for-tat moves, both countries expelled each others’ diplomats on Monday. Ottawa said it was expelling six Indian diplomats and consular officials “in relation to a targeted campaign against Canadian citizens by agents linked to the government of India.”
The government acted “to disrupt the chain of operations that go from Indian diplomats here in Canada to criminal organizations, to direct violent impacts on Canadians right across this country,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
Global News has learned agents working out of India’s high commission in Ottawa and consulates in Vancouver and Toronto were behind dozens of violent crimes across Canada that targeted opponents of the Narendra Modi government.
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Although on paper they held diplomatic and consular positions, the Indian agents played key roles in a wave of shootings, killings, threats, arsons and extortions in Canada, according to senior sources familiar with the matter.
The victims were mostly supporters of the Khalistan movement, which seeks independence for India’s Sikh-majority Punjab region. But others were simply rivals of the government, the sources said.
The revelations came as Canadian law enforcement continues to probe the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., where the killers were allegedly tied to Indian government agents.
— with files from Global News
(Reporting by Krishn Kaushik, writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)