“I've spoken directly with PM Modi…”, claims Justin Trudeau, India rejects Canadian PM claims

Updated:1 year, 9 months ago

New Delhi, October 15 (ANI): Amid the new escalation of India-Canada row, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed that he spoke to PM Modi last week over the issue. He said, "This is not a choice that Canada made to create a chill in Canada-India relations. India is an important democracy is a country with which we have deep historical people-to-people business ties at a time where the instability around geopolitics means democracies have to stick together. That is why when we started to understand through intelligence agencies that India was possibly if not probably, behind (Hardeep Singh) Nijjar's killing, the killing of a Canadian on Canadian soil last summer, our first choice to the government of India to say, we know this has happened, work with us to fix this. We don't want to be having this fight, but obviously the killing of a Canadian on Canadian soil is not something that we can ignore as a country. So every step of the way we have apprised India of what we know. I've spoken directly with Prime Minister Modi. We have engaged with intelligence counterparts, and unfortunately, every step of the way, both after I made the statement in the House of Commons last September and till now, the response of the Indian government has been to deny, to obfuscate, to attack me personally and the integrity of the government of Canada and its officials and its police agencies. We have simply said we're going to allow our agencies to do the work, particularly to move from intelligence collection from agencies to police investigations that result in arrests, trials and consequences within a rigorous robust and independent judicial system. That has been our approach every step of the way. Indeed, over this past week, when the RCMP reached out to its law enforcement counterparts in India, there was a path where we could have worked together to ensure accountability and changes and steps that would have resulted in keeping Canadians safe because that is our top priority. The indian government rejected those advances and rejected our attempts to find some way through this. And that brought us to this point of having to disrupt the chain of operations that go from Indian diplomats here in Canada to criminal organizations to direct violent impacts on Canadians right across this country."

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