India tries to put the ball in Canada’s court

BHUBANESWAR: India will wait for Canadian police to share information on the three Indian men it has arrested and charged with the murder of a Sikh separatist leader last year, Foreign Minister Subrah­manyam Jaishan­kar said on Saturday.

Canadian police charged the three on Friday over the murder 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 said the suspects “apparently are Indians of some kind of gang background… we’ll have to wait for the police to tell us.” The trio, all Indian nationals, were arrested in the city of Edmonton in Alberta on Friday, police said.

Nijjar, 45, was shot dead in June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. A few months later, Canadian 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”.