New Delhi suggests that Canada's attribution of responsibility to India for the Sikh tragedy is driven by political necessity

May 6 :
Following the arrest of three Indian nationals in connection with the murder of a Sikh separatist in Vancouver last year, Canada's inquiry into the alleged role of India in the death was criticised by New Delhi's foreign minister as a "political compulsion."

In their May 3 arrest, Canadian police stated they were investigating the three individuals' ties to the Indian government "if any" in relation to the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

In the autumn of 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that there were "credible allegations" connecting Indian intelligence to the murder, which precipitated a precipitous decline in diplomatic ties between Canada and India.

India strongly denied the claims, calling them "absurd." As a result, visa processing was temporarily halted and Canada's diplomatic presence in the country was drastically reduced. The Canadian government's political obsession with pointing fingers at India was cited by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in a May 4 interview with the Press Trust of India.

When security forces crushed a separatist rebellion in the 1980s that sought to establish a Sikh country called Khalistan, thousands of innocent people died. While the movement has lost steam in India, a loud minority continues to back it among the Sikh diaspora, the biggest of which is in Canada, home to over 770,000 people.

Sikh separatists are "causing problems for them (Canada), for us and also for our relationship," according to Jaishankar, who said that New Delhi has tried to convince Ottawa not to provide Sikh separatists political legitimacy or visas.

The fact that "police agencies also do not cooperate with us" and that "Canada does not share any evidence with us in certain cases" were his other points.

Nijjar became a Canadian citizen 18 years after his 1997 immigration. Indian law enforcement had issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of terrorism and conspiracy to murder.

Charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy were brought against the three twenty-something Indian nationals who were apprehended. In his murder last June, they were indicted on charges of being the gunman, the driver, and the lookout.

According to the Canadian police, "others may have played a role" in the murder.

An Indian national residing in the Czech Republic was indicted by the US Justice Department in November for his alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate another Sikh separatist leader in the US.