The News Freedom
New Delhi, February 5
India’s High Commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, conveyed in an interview with the Canadian news outlet, the Globe and Mail, that India will not provide information to investigators until Canada shares the evidence it has amassed regarding the killing of terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
In interviews conducted both in November and the past week with The Globe, Verma asserted that Canada has not presented any evidence linking Nijjar’s killing to India, which he deems a prerequisite for New Delhi’s cooperation. “We need relevant and specific evidence for us to help the Canadian authorities Unless we see something relevant and specific, it would be extremely difficult for us to do anything to help the Canadian authorities,” Verma said a week ago reported the news outlet.
Nijjar was fatally shot in Vancouver on June 18, 2023. Three months after the incident, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau startled the House of Commons by announcing credible allegations of a connection between Nijjar’s assassination and Indian agents.
The report in the Globe and Mail highlighted a difference in stance between Verma and Jody Thomas, the then-national-security adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Thomas, in an interview with CTV before her retirement in late January, described the relationship between the two countries as improving and emphasized cooperation.
The news outlet reports that in November, an unsealed U.S. indictment supported the contention that India was plotting to kill multiple Sikh separatists in North America and the indictment indicated that a video of Nijjar’s deceased body was sent to an individual hired to assassinate New York-based terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the organizer of a global referendum for an independent Khalistan in the Punjab region of India.