High Commissioner of India to Canada Dinesh Patnaik, shown in Ottawa in January, said the investigation into the slaying of B.C. activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar has been politicized.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
India’s top diplomat in Canada says CSIS has been politically compromised and that the RCMP are investigating “fantasy” allegations that Indian officials are involved in crimes against Canadians.
In a sweeping interview with The Globe and Mail, High Commissioner Dinesh Patnaik went on the offensive, attacking the integrity of Canada’s national-security agencies, while pushing back against assertions from Canadian authorities that the Government of India has directed multiple homicide plots and foreign-interference campaigns on Canadian soil.
Mr. Patnaik asserted that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has been compromised by Sikh separatists using Canada as a base for their campaign to carve out a breakaway state in northwest India, which they call Khalistan.
He said the investigation into the slaying of B.C. activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar has been “twisted around” and politicized – adding that while the RCMP is an “independent, very good organization,” in the past the force had been “susceptible to political direction.”
“There are a whole lot of allegations within India that the Canadian security establishment is compromised,” he said, suggesting that Khalistani groups have paid Canadian intelligence officers to report false claims against India.
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Mr. Patnaik, a career diplomat who became high commissioner to Canada in September, made his pointed comments in an exclusive interview at a time when Canada is trying to reset relations with the country of 1.4 billion people.
A spokesperson for Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Gary Anandasangaree, in an e-mail to The Globe rejected the diplomat’s allegation that Canadian security agencies have been compromised.
“Any suggestion that CSIS is ‘compromised’ is false and undermines the dedicated work of the men and women who serve to keep Canadians safe,” Simon Lafortune said. “We have full confidence in CSIS’s integrity, independence, and its critical role in identifying and assessing threats to Canada’s national security.”
While the minister didn’t name India, he said “CSIS’s threat assessment of the main perpetrators of foreign interference and transnational repression against Canada has not changed.”
Earlier this month, the agency said in its annual report that India has engaged in “surveillance and other coercive tactics meant to suppress criticism of the Government of India and create fear in the community.”
In the interview, the high commissioner said those allegations are baseless but acknowledged it’s possible that there could be rogue agents operating outside of New Delhi’s direction.
He said Canada and India may have their differences, but any assertions of Indian government involvement in crimes against Canadians aren’t based in reality.
“There are some real issues and some fantasy issues,” he said.
The RCMP declined to address the diplomat’s statements, saying “we continue to engage and build our relationship with India, recognizing its importance.”
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Mr. Patnaik also denied that India has used its diplomatic missions to conduct covert activities and says the seven Indian officials expelled after Mr. Nijjar’s slaying in June, 2023, “weren’t doing anything improper.”
The Globe recently reported that in the months after Mr. Nijjar’s death, Canadian national-security officials were presented with intelligence alleging that Indian consular staff operating in Vancouver supplied information that assisted in the assassination.
The real threat to Canada, Mr. Patnaik said, is from extreme elements of the Khalistan independence movement. He accused Ottawa of “protecting” Khalistani separatists who the Government of India alleges are linked to violence.
Mr. Patnaik said Canada crossed a line by expelling the previous high commissioner, Sanjay Kumar Verma, in 2024. He blamed Khalistani separatists for sowing divisions between the two countries and said that they found an ally in the former Trudeau government.
“They can’t succeed in any other country, not in the U.K., not in Australia, not in the U.S.,” he said. “They succeeded in Canada because they had a prime minister who was weak enough to take their thing.”
A recently released RCMP briefing, obtained through the federal access-to-information law, shows that in 2024, the Mounties suspected that the Indian government was involved in the murder of at least two pro-Khalistan activists in Canada. The documents also say that India plotted to kill three other Canadians after allegedly orchestrating the killing of Mr. Nijjar.
The high commissioner told The Globe that Ottawa has not produced any credible proof that India is behind plots targeting Khalistani separatists. He said there are “allegations on both sides,” and insisted that India has co-operated with the Mounties on foreign-interference investigations.
“Go to court and prove it before you make the allegations in public. People are doing a public trial without ever having gone to court,” he said. “Is that how investigating agencies work around the world? You are a first-world country, with a law-and-order system. It should work accordingly.”
Four Indian citizens have been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in Mr. Nijjar’s shooting. They are expected to go on trial as early as the summer of 2027 in B.C. Supreme Court, but a continuing Federal Court process could keep any sensitive intelligence and evidence allegedly linking India to the slaying from being brought up in their trial.
Mr. Patnaik conceded that there could be a “few mad elements” within the Indian government involved in anti-Khalistani plots. If that’s true, he said, India will prosecute them. He pointed to the plot to kill one of Mr. Nijjar’s associates in New York, lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, and said India co-operated fully and opened its own investigation.
In that case, New Delhi said this was the work of Vikash Yadav, who the government described as a rogue intelligence officer. He is also accused of co-ordinating Mr. Nijjar’s killing, according to U.S. court filings. American authorities are attempting to extradite Mr. Yadav, who was arrested by Indian police in a kidnapping case shortly after his U.S. indictment. Now, Mr. Patnaik said, he has disappeared.
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The high commissioner also challenged concerns raised by Sikh groups about the recent appointment of Toronto consul-general Mahaveer Singhvi, who has spent the past decade working in counterterrorism for India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
The pro-Khalistan group, Sikhs for Justice, filed a formal complaint over the posting, alleging that it’s part of a pattern of India using diplomats to conduct surveillance on Canada’s Sikh community.
“First of all, why are they afraid of somebody who’s been in counterterrorism?” Mr. Patnaik said, adding that only terrorists should be worried.
India has a history of sending diplomats to Canada who’ve had careers in counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Parag Jain, who was posted to India’s high commission in Ottawa between 2016 and 2018, was promoted to head of India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, in 2025.
Pavan Kumar Rai, the former head of RAW’s operations in Canada, was expelled by Ottawa in September, 2023, after Canadian officials received British intelligence that linked Mr. Nijjar’s killing to agents of India.
Mr. Patnaik said “all countries” have intelligence officers in their diplomatic missions.
With a report from Colin Freeze
Editor’s note: E-mailed statements to The Globe and Mail previously attributed to the Minister of Public Safety should have been attributed to his press secretary Simon Lafortune. The article has been corrected.