India will wait for police in Canada to share information on the three Indian men they arrested and charged with murder in the death of a Sikh separatist leader last year, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday.
Police charged the three on Friday in the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar and said they were probing whether the suspects had links to the Indian government.
Jaishankar said he had seen news of the arrests and that the suspects “apparently are Indians of some kind of gang background … we’ll have to wait for the police to tell us.”
“But, as I said, one of our concerns which we have been telling them is that, you know, they have allowed organized crime from India, specifically from Punjab, to operate in Canada,” he said.
At an event on Saturday in the state of Odisha, Jaishankar criticized the Canadian government for allowing people with links to organized crime into the country. He also singled out Canada in a denunciation of several countries where he said pro-Khalistan voices held sway.
“Our biggest problem right now is in Canada, because in Canada, actually today the party in power in Canada … [has] given these kind of extremism, separatism, advocates of violence a certain legitimacy in the name of free speech,” Jaishankar said.
Sanjay Verma, India’s high commissioner to Canada, said India hopes to get regular updates from Canadian authorities regarding the three arrested Indians.
“I understand that the arrests have been made as a result of investigations conducted by the relevant Canadian law enforcement agencies. This issue is internal to Canada and therefore we have no comments to offer in this regard,” Verma said.
CBC’s Evan Dyer breaks down what investigators revealed on Friday about the arrests of three men in connection with the killing of prominent Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., last June.
The trio, all Indian nationals, were arrested in Edmonton on Friday, police said.
Nijjar, 45, was shot dead in June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. A few months later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited credible allegations of Indian government involvement, prompting a diplomatic crisis with New Delhi.
Nijjar was a Canadian citizen campaigning for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India. The presence of Sikh separatist groups in Canada has long frustrated New Delhi, which had labelled Nijjar a “terrorist.”
Police in Canada said they had worked with U.S. law enforcement agencies, without giving additional details, and suggested more arrests might be coming.
