Ottawa: Canadian deputy foreign affairs minister David Morrison has confirmed to a US newspaper that Indian home minister Amit Shah was involved in a plot to kill Canadian nationals.

According to Kashmir Media Service, this revelation, made during a Canadian parliamentary committee hearing on public safety and national security, is likely to escalate tensions between Ottawa and New Delhi.

The Washington Post had on October 14 cited unnamed Canadian officials as saying they had told the Indian government that “conversations and texts among Indian diplomats” ordered out of the country that day “include references” to Shah and a senior official in the Research and Analysis Wing “who have authorised … intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists” in Canada.

The article in the US newspaper followed a widening diplomatic row, a year after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that agents of the Indian government were involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a pro-Khalistan Canadian national.

On October 14, India announced that Canada had identified six of its diplomats, including High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma, as “persons of interest” in a criminal investigation. Later, Canada issued expulsion notices to six Indian diplomats in Ottawa. Following India’s rejection of all Canadian requests for assistance in the investigation, Ottawa proceeded with the expulsions.

That day, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) held a press briefing to say that its investigations were beyond the Nijjar killing and involved evidence of Indian diplomats allegedly using members of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang in criminally intimidating Canadian nationals of Indian origin.

In an earlier version of the Washington Post article, Amit Shah was not named, and it only referenced the involvement of a “senior official in India”. However, in a later update several hours after initial publication, the newspaper identified the Indian home minister as the official in question, drawing on more detailed information from its sources.

Nathalie Drouin, national security and intelligence advisor to the prime minister, explained in her opening remarks to the parliamentary committee that speaking to the Post on “background” was part of a media strategy to counter “disinformation” from the Indian government. She alleged that the “serious crimes committed in Canada include homicides, assassination plots, perpetrated extortions and other extreme violence.”

Source: Kashmir Media Service