TORONTO: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that Canada has shared with India evidence of “credible allegations” about the involvement of Indian agents in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar many weeks ago and wants New Delhi to “commit constructively” with Ottawa to establish the facts on the serious matter.
Tensions flared between India and Canada earlier this week following Trudeau’s explosive allegations of the “potential” involvement of Indian agents in the killing of Khalistani extremist Nijjar on his country’s soil on June 18 in British Columbia.
India had designated Nijjar as a terrorist in 2020.
India angrily rejected the allegations as “absurd” and “motivated” and expelled a senior Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move to Ottawa’s expulsion of an Indian official over the case.
“I just want to simply say that we’ve shared those allegations, those credible allegations with India for weeks. We are working with our partners,” Trudeau said on Friday in a press conference with the visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“And what we are asking is for India to commit constructively with Canada to establish the facts on this situation. We’re there to work with them. And we have been for weeks now,” Trudeau said in response to a question.
“Canada has shared the credible allegations that I talked about on Monday with India. We did that many weeks ago. We hope they engage with us so that we can get to the bottom of this very serious matter. That’s important,” he said.