The Current - India’s response to RCMP allegations

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats this week, following RCMP allegations that Indian officials in Canada have been involved in a wide range of criminal activities. The CBC’s Salimah Shivji joins us from Delhi to discuss the allegations — and how they’ve been received in India.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Diplomatic standoff 2.0 starts between India and Canada. Like last time, this time again it has been started by none other than Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Big story that we continue to track the absolute collapse in relations

between India and Canada. All right, breaking news coming in. India's strong rejection of Canada's allegation. Well, amid the diplomatic escalation, India slams Canada. What it calls preposterous imputations, ascribing them to the political agenda of the Trudeau government. That is Indian media reacting to Canada's expulsion of six top Indian diplomats earlier this week.

This comes after fresh allegations from the RCMP that Indian officials operating here have been involved in a wide range of criminal activities. Officials operating here have been involved in a wide range of criminal activities. India has denied these allegations and in response expelled six Canadian diplomats. This latest spat comes more than a year after the killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nidger in Surrey, B.C., which Canada alleges Indian officials were involved in. Salima Shivji has been covering this developing story. She is CBC's South Asia correspondent, and we've reached her in Delhi. Hello. Hi there. A lot has happened in the past

few days. What do we know about the Indian diplomats who have been expelled? Well, these are six of the highest level Indian diplomats in Canada, including, of course, the High Commissioner Sanjay Verma. And essentially, expelling a large group of such senior diplomats is really the toughest measure a country can take under the Vienna Convention, right, that lays down the ground rules for diplomatic relations. So this is a huge move. You know, they were persons of interest, police say. The RCMP revealed Monday that it has uncovered evidence that these diplomats, the Indian diplomats in Canada, were involved in an escalating campaign of violence against pro-Calistani activists in Canada. You know, those activists fighting for a separate sixth state in India called Khalistan.

So the RCMP talked about allegations of links to extortion, harassment and murder. Now, back to the Vienna Convention, it also outlines the privileges that diplomats have, diplomats like these, you know, and that includes some degree of immunity. Canadian authorities say that they asked for that immunity to be waived in this case so these senior diplomats from India could cooperate with the police investigation in Canada, and India flat out refused because for India that was really an affront. The ask was just too much from Canada. Now India responded by expelling six Canadian diplomats, including the acting High Commissioner. What has the Indian government said about these expulsions? What do we know? Well, they said they were absolutely uncalled for. The Indian government

says that Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in particular is targeting Indian diplomats with what they call baseless allegations. And I got to say, India's response was really, really very angry, filled with like vehement denials. Officials said that the aspersions cast on the high commissioner who was posted in Ottawa, Mr. Verma, they called them ludicrous. They said they should be treated with contempt. And here in Delhi, the expulsions of the Indian diplomats from Canada are really not described as expulsions.

You know, the narrative here among government officials, and it's also all over the media, is that India recalled its Canadian envoy. And that was because, they say, of security concerns, that they were being threatened and India didn't trust Canada to keep them safe. So, you know, looking around, you see countless headlines describing India as bringing their diplomats home and then expelling six Canadian diplomats, instead of how the situation has been described in foreign media reports, which is tit-for-tat retaliation, Canada expelling top diplomats, and India doing the same. Tell me a little bit more about how the media is painting all of this, and if the public in India has much to say or cares much about this story.

Well, the media very much is obviously just in general, Indian media is really boisterous. It's not for the faint of heart. There's a lot of banners and graphics moving around, but it is really consistent on this issue in terms of Canada-India ties. And it's very much one-sided coverage on India's side. Of course, there's lots of condemnation of Canada. You see, you know, you heard off the top, a lot of sharp attacks against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in particular. You know, you can hear anchors saying that Trudeau has lied about India, but, you know, India has stood up to him. So that's sort of a common thread in the media here. There's also a lot of praise for India's strong stance on this. I talked about their

angry denials and really consistent messaging over the last, over a year since these allegations have come to light publicly. You know, there's a lot of praise for how India has stayed strong and stood up to Canada in the media and a little bit on the street as well. It's not so surprising. Of course, the mainstream media in India has largely fallen in line with the Indian government. There's often repetition between what officials say and what is said in the media. Here at home, of course, from the prime minister, the message is very different. I just want to play a clip what Justin Trudeau had to say at a press conference on Monday. It is obvious that the government of India made a fundamental error in thinking that they could engage in supporting criminal activity against Canadians here on Canadian soil,

whether it be murders or extortion or other violent acts, is absolutely unacceptable. Salima, what do we really know about what exactly the Prime Minister is alleging here? Tell us a little bit more about the Indian government supporting what we're hearing, a wider array of criminal activity in Canada. Yeah, so the crux of the investigation is evidence that Canadian police say that they do have, that the expelled diplomats were involved in criminal activity, police say. Things like extortion, intimidation, you know, harassment, even murder. Sources say that Indian diplomats engaged in the covert activities themselves, but also that they recruited others to help them, you know, sometimes by force, you know, with intimidation and threats in terms of getting people to help them and other times, you know, just recruiting others. So what were

they doing? Sources say that they were collecting intelligence, you know, photographs, going to rallies and basically tracking a little bit of the activity of Sikh activists in Canada. And then sources say they were relaying them back to the Indian government. And sources have told us as well that there is still a support network for this sort of clandestine operations involving allegedly Indian agents. And that support network seems to still be in place in Canada. Sources have also said, sources who are close to the investigation, that there could be more expulsions, that it could be not just end with the six diplomats being sent back to India. The RCMP, of course, is still investigating. But, you know, important to

say that the Indian side has dismissed the claims. They say it's simply not true. They've called them preposterous. And part of what I understand the Indian government is saying is part of Justin Trudeau's political agenda. Walk us through is saying is part of Justin Trudeau's political agenda. Walk us through what the Indian government believes Justin Trudeau is trying to do here. Yeah, the basic argument really repeated often, I would say consistently by the Indian government, is that Trudeau is playing politics domestically and basically ruining a foreign relationship in the process, right? The relationship between Canada and India. So what officials here say is that Trudeau needs the votes of the Sikh diaspora, the Sikh community, and that is why they say he is doing this. Couple that too, I would say,

with the long-standing grievance from the Indian side, and this is, you know, from decades, but they believe Canada is not doing enough to rein in Khalistani activity within the diaspora in Canada, you know, what they say amounts to a threat to Indian sovereignty. So the term, you know, vote bank politics is actually thrown around a lot here in India, the idea that you're appealing to this loyal bloc of voters from one community, in this case, the Sikh community. And Indian authorities have just blatantly accused Trudeau and his liberals of doing this. They say he's smearing India for political gains with these allegations against diplomats. And, you know, even in the paper this morning, you know, there's more from government sources in India,

basically circulated widely. And a quote that you see often is that they see all of this as the same old Trudeau saying the same old things for the same old reasons. We know Trudeau had a brief meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week. That was at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit. I am curious, where does the Prime Minister in India,

how does he fit into the RCMP investigation and the allegations? Do we know anything about that? Yes, there's a lot of talk about the meetings between Trudeau and Modi, whether they're brief or not. This all sort of came out in the beginning of the allegations came out right after the summit, the G20 summit in Delhi. We saw that it was a really frosty meeting there. The latest one apparently was a really brief meeting on the sidelines. India says they didn't talk about anything substantive. In terms of Modi himself,

he has not been named or said anything in terms of the RCMP investigation, but some media have reported through Canadian government sources that part of the evidence that Canadian police have is text messages among the banished diplomats that had references to a senior official in India and a senior official from India's spy service. And the suggestion in some of these media reports is that senior official that is being talked about in this evidence that apparently the Canadian police services have, that senior official is Amit Shah, Home Affairs Minister and one of Modi's closest allies. So part of his really tight inner circle that is, you know, from certain media reports,

the Indian government has not commented on the reports at all. You know, diplomatic relations between Canada and India have been on shaky ground for years. And now we have, you know, Canada investigating and believing that the Indian government is tied with a murder that happened here on Canadian soil. And now we have all of this network of widespread violence, potentially allegations again. But where does this week leave that relationship between Canada and India? I would say it's in just about the worst shape that it could be in, quite frankly. You know, I've had two people today who are watching these developments really closely tell me, you know, not just today, this week, that they've never seen India's relations with a country like Canada, you know, a so-called friendly nation. They have strong person-to-person

and business ties. They have never seen India's relations with a country like Canada as bad as this. And both experts actually told me that even Pakistan, with which India has such a notoriously contentious and violent relationship, even Pakistan has never done what Canada has done diplomatically this week. So I think that's a pretty good indicator, pretty good insight into just how bad this is for Canada-India ties. Foreign BC Premier Yujal Desange spoke to CBC's Power and Politics about this diplomatic fallout, have a listen. to Jagmeet Singh, who is a Khalistani himself. I'm not suggesting he's violent, but many Khalistanis have perpetrated violence on the community for a long time, including Air India. Not much has been done. Canada has failed. I'm not suggesting it has the right to do what it's doing, but we need to examine our own actions in defending ordinary Canadians that are under threat from

the Khalistani extremism. How does that square with what you're hearing from officials and regular people in India? Yeah, that's very much what officials say here. You know, the idea that Khalisan activists have an outsized influence in Canada's political sphere. That's sort of a common thread here in not just among officials, but also people in the street a little bit as well. The NDP's Jagmeet Singh, for example, is not so popular here in India. And officials here really focus on the Liberals and Justin Trudeau. Many also even bring up his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau,

who they also see as being soft on the Khalistani threat, you know, in the 70s and 80s, when there was obviously a lot of turbulence in terms of, you know, the Sikh relations in Khalistan. There was obviously a lot of turbulence in terms of, you know, the Sikh relations in Khalistan. And so that's a longstanding bone of contention, always present, really, in the Canada-India diplomatic relationship. And people on the streets, quite honestly, many do support India's strong rhetoric on Khalistani activists abroad. Quite a few people here see that as well as a threat to India's sovereignty.

Selimi, just before you go, what are you watching for on the story in the next couple of days and weeks? Well, I got to say tomorrow is a pretty big day. We should see the weekly briefing from the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs. We haven't heard from the government in person. We've heard their response and that angry, really quite, you know, disdainful response in statements only, in written statements. So we will likely hear more in person, more details on India's

position tomorrow and where officials in New Delhi really see this tension going and how bad it could get because there is, of course, a risk of further retaliation against Canada. Okay. Salima, thank you so much for this. My pleasure. Salima Shivji is CBC's South Asia correspondent. She is in Delhi. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.