Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s high commissioner to Canada, has denied allegations of involvement in the 2023 killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, dismissing the accusations as “politically motivated.

A furious diplomatic row between India and Canada has pushed an otherwise fringe separatist campaign for an independent Sikh homeland in Punjab into the international spotlight.

India's government on Thursday denied it was working with mobsters to target Sikh separatists in Canada as alleged publicly this week by Canadian officials in an escalating diplomatic dispute. India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal denied that India was in cahoots with India-based mobsters in Canada and even suggested that Canadian authorities had been resisting India's attempts to extradite those people to India.

Last week, US federal prosecutors charged an Indian government official with orchestrating a plot to murder a Sikh activist in New York City. India has designated that activist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun,

India’s high commissioner to Canada has denied any involvement in the murder of a Canadian Sikh leader who was killed in British Columbia last year even though the Canadian government has named him as

Canada‘s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, says India was asked to waive diplomatic and consular immunity and cooperate in the investigation but it refused