2023-10-19 20:36:34
Canada has withdrawn 41 diplomats from India amid a dispute over the killing of a Sikh separatist leader. Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced this on Thursday. Joly told a news conference that India had threatened to withdraw the diplomats’ official status by Friday.
New Delhi last month asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited evidence of a possible link between Indian agents and the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June. The activist and Canadian citizen was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in a Vancouver suburb.
India dismissed as absurd the suspicion that Indian agents were linked to Nijjar’s murder. Nijjar was not only a representative of the Sikh religious community, but also of the so-called Khalistan movement, which advocates for an independent country on the territory of India. The leadership in New Delhi therefore viewed the native Indian as a terrorist.
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