- Saturday, May 18, 2024
Jaishankar said that he has seen news of the arrests and said the suspects ‘apparently are Indians of some kind of gang background’ and they would wait for the police to tell them.
By: Shubham Ghosh
NEW DELHI will wait for the Canadian police to share information on the three Indian nationals who have been arrested in the North American nation and charged with the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June last year, foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday (4).
A day before, cops in Canada charged the three over the shooting of Nijjar outside a gurdwara in British Columbia and said they were investigating whether the suspects had links to the Narendra Modi government.
The Indian diplomat, who remarked in the past that New Delhi doesn’t follow the policy of targeted killing on foreign soil, said that he has 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”, a Reuters report said.
Read: Canada makes three arrests in Nijjar murder case: What we know about suspects so far
“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 added.
Sanjay Verma, India’s high commissioner to Canada, said he hopes to get regular updates from the Canadian side about 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 added.
Read: Modi government blocks access to Sikh activist Nijjar murder documentary: report
The trio, all in their 20s, were arrested in the city of Edmonton in Alberta on Friday (3), the police added.
A major controversy erupted in September last year when Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau alleged the Indian government’s involvement in the elimination of the 45-year-old Sikh leader, who was a citizen of his country and campaigned for the creation of the independent Sikh homeland of Khalistan carved out of India.
It led to a diplomatic crisis between the two democracies and affected fields such as people-to-people movement and economic ties.
Following the arrest of the three Indian men, Trudeau said at an event celebrating Sikh heritage and culture that Canada is a “rule of law country with a strong and independent justice system, as well as a fundamental commitment to protecting all its citizens”.
