India summons Canadian diplomat after Trudeau stokes flames of imported foreign conflict in Canada

India summons Canadian diplomat over pro-Khalistan separatism slogans at Trudeau speech

OTTAWA — What appeared to be a last-minute trip by the prime minister to attend Khalsa Day celebrations in Toronto has landed Canada in a new diplomatic tiff with India.

The Indian government summoned Canada’s Deputy High Commissioner Stewart Wheeler to explain “separatist slogans” shouted at the parade where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave remarks, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a press release on Monday.

A normal PM would know to make a brief statement and leave in such a situation.

Cries of Free Palestine?

Share

India meddled in elections, is a ‘foreign threat’, alleges Canadian intel report

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the country’s highest foreign intelligence agency, has alleged that India had potentially interfered in the country’s election in a recent intelligence report. The report accessed by the media on Thursday named India as a ‘foreign interference threat’ and stated that the government “must do more to protect Canada’s robust democratic institutions and processes.”

Share

Woman paraded naked: A familiar headline in India

It was sometime after 1am on 11 December when more than a dozen people barged into Sasikala’s [not her real name] house.

The 42-year-old was dragged out, stripped and paraded naked around the village, tied to an electricity pole and beaten for hours.

A resident of Hosa Vantamuri village in Belagavi district in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, she was being punished because her 24-year-old son had eloped with his 18-year-old girlfriend.

Share

Terry Glavin: Nope, Trudeau hasn’t been ‘vindicated’ on India murder allegations

​It’s been a full week since federal prosecutors in New York unsealed an indictment that lays out an aborted murder-for-hire plot hatched in India last spring, and there’s still nothing to warrant claims by the federal government and its friends that the news is a vindication of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s melodramatic detonation of Indo-Canadian relations in September.

Share

How a U.S. indictment connects to an alleged India-linked murder plot on Canadian soil

A recently unsealed U.S. criminal indictment alleging a plot connected to the Indian government to carry out multiple assassinations in North America has rattled Canadian and American relations with the world’s most populous democracy.

The court document, made public Wednesday, lays out U.S. prosecutors’ case against Indian national Nikhil Gupta. U.S. authorities allege Gupta was planning to kill an American Sikh political activist before he was arrested.

The indictment landed months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shocked the House of Commons by accusing India of being behind the killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia.

Share

U.S. indictment alleges multiple Indian assassination plots across North America

A newly unsealed U.S. criminal indictment has unleashed an unprecedented flood of details about an alleged plot connected to the Indian government to carry out multiple assassinations in North America.

Perhaps the most surprising allegation in the murder-for-hire indictment filed in New York state against Indian national Nikhil Gupta is a claim that there were plans to carry out three such killings on Canadian soil.

The indictment, made public Wednesday, accuses Gupta of attempting this year to arrange one killing in New York after receiving instructions from an Indian government employee.

Thank Justin for turning us into a province of Khalistan.

Share

U.S. thwarted plot to kill Canadian Sikh separatist on American soil

U.S. authorities thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate a Sikh separatist on American soil and issued a warning to India’s government over concerns it was involved in the plot, according to multiple people familiar with the case.

The target of the plot was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American and Canadian citizen who is general counsel for Sikhs for Justice, a U.S.-based group that is part of a movement pushing for an independent Sikh state called “Khalistan”.

Share

Online video tells travellers not to fly Air India; poster denies message is a threat

The Canadian government and law enforcement agencies are remaining tight-lipped about a video circulating online telling travellers not to fly Air India after Nov. 19.

The video was posted by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an advocate for an independent Sikh state known as Khalistan.

Pannun, who lives in Washington, D.C., is listed as a terrorist in India due to his views.

Share

Why isn’t Canada cracking down on this Indian student visa scam?

Canada’s rift with India continues. It’s been almost two months since Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau accused ‘agents of the government of India’ of assassinating Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Nijjar. The two countries have been in a diplomatic stand-off ever since, with trade talks suspended and Ottawa failing to provide any concrete proof behind its claim that Nijjar was killed under direction from Modi. But the possibility that Nijjar’s death was a result of gang activity between warring factions of criminal Sikh gang members in Canada has put a spotlight on the country’s growing Punjabi community and highlighted questions over Canada’s international student visa and immigration fraud.

Share

India envoy tells Ottawa to produce evidence that New Delhi was behind killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar

India’s High Commissioner to Canada is urging Ottawa to release evidence backing up its accusation that agents of the Indian government were behind the killing of a prominent British Columbia Sikh separatist leader, a charge that ruptured bilateral relations after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced it in September.

In an interview on Friday, the commissioner, Sanjay Kumar Verma, told The Globe and Mail that India has not been shown concrete evidence by Canada or Canada’s allies that Indian agents were involved in the June gangland-style slaying of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, which took place in Burnaby, B.C.

Share

Sikh independence vote takes place in B.C. amid Canada-India tensions

SURREY, B.C. – Thousands of Sikh voters are expected to turn out today in the Metro Vancouver municipality of Surrey, to vote in an unofficial referendum at the centre of Canada’s ongoing tensions with India.

Organizers say the referendum on Khalistan — an independent state in India proposed by some Sikhs — is taking place at the same Surrey gurdwara where activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead in June.

Today’s vote is the second round of the referendum in British Columbia, after organizers said the first ballot on Sept. 10 was so popular that voting couldn’t be completed in one day.

Share

‘Trudeau a laughing stock in India’: Says Poilievre amid diplomatic row

The leader of the Conservative Party in Canada and Justin Trudeau’s main opponent in the upcoming elections, Pierre Poilievre, has criticised the Canadian prime minister’s handling of the diplomatic row with Delhi once again and said he has reduced himself to a “laughing stock” in India.

“Justin Trudeau is considered a laughing stock in India – the world’s biggest democracy,” Mr Poilievre said in an interview with Nepal’s Namaste Radio Toronto.

Share

Canada pulls 41 diplomats from India after diplomatic immunity stripped

All but 21 Canadian diplomats in India have been pulled out of that country, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said Thursday, confirming the slashing of diplomatic staff by roughly two-thirds amid ongoing tensions between the two countries.

Joly said India has formally conveyed its plan to Ottawa to strip diplomatic immunity from 41 Canadian diplomats and their 42 family members by Friday.

Canada has facilitated the safe departure of those diplomats and their families from India, she added, noting the stripping of immunity “would put their personal safety at risk.”

Share