Recalled envoy on how he found out he was ‘person of interest’ in Nijjar killing

India’s diplomatic relations with Canada has taken another serious hit after Ambassador Sanjay Kumar Verma and five other Indian diplomats were declared ‘persons of interest’ by Canadian authorities in connection with the murder of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. In an interview with news agency PTI, Verma, who was recently recalled from Canada where he served as India’s High Commissioner in Ottawa, spoke about how he found himself “backstabbed by our professional colleagues in Canada”
Verma, speaking about the events that unfolded earlier in October, outlined the unusual series of developments that led to this revelation.
“I was on a visit to Toronto. I was sitting at the airport when I received a message from an interlocutor in the global affairs in Canada, which is the foreign ministry in Canada, to come to the foreign ministry in the evening. Unfortunately, I was not available, I was flying back on the 12th (October). Then on the 13th (October), they agreed to receive me in the morning,” he said.
During this meeting, Verma said he, along with five other diplomats, was informed that they had been identified as ‘persons of interest’ in the investigation into Nijjar’s killing. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the lead investigating agency, requested the waiver of diplomatic immunity for Verma and his colleagues to allow them to be interrogated.
“So, I took that as a message. We diplomats are messengers in any case, so we sent that message back home for advising us what to do,” Sanjay Verma said.
“It doesn’t happen in diplomacy,” Verma noted, expressing his disbelief over the situation. “Generally speaking, there would be some kind of messaging to start with. I didn’t get that either. And all of a sudden, this was handed over to us. So I would say this demonstrates the distrust. This demonstrates kind of a backstabbing that was done to us by our very professional colleagues in Canada.”
He further highlighted the historically strong ties between India and Canada, citing their shared democratic values and significant bilateral relations, including trade and investment. “We have a huge diasporic interest in Canada, and we were doing well in the overall canvas of our bilateral relations. This came to me as a shock,” Verma added.
The diplomatic row has grown more intense since Ottawa’s demand to remove Verma’s diplomatic immunity, a move that was met with strong opposition from India. Both nations have since expelled each other’s diplomats, deepening the rift caused by Nijjar’s murder probe.