Calling Canada’s behaviour “the pits”, India’s recalled high commissioner Sanjay Verma says India was backstabbed and treated in a most unprofessional manner by a country that is supposed to be a friendly democracy.

He told PTI that “a handful” of supporters of Khalistan have turned the ideology into a criminal enterprise, which indulges in a range of activities such as gun-running and human trafficking and yet the Canadian authorities turn a blind eye because they comprise a vocal electoral bank for local politicians.

In an unexpected downturn of relations, Verma was declared a “person of interest” by Canada on October 13 in its investigation into the June 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen who has been declared a Khalistani terrorist by India. Before Canada could take further action, New Delhi recalled Verma and five other diplomats, who were also similarly named.

Verma, an Indian Institute of Technology graduate and a nuclear scientist, has previously served as India’s ambassador to Japan and Sudan. Asked if he has ever seen anything like this in his 36-year diplomatic career, Verma said: “This is the pits. And, this is the most unprofessional approach to a bilateral relation. If they believe it’s a large relationship for them as well, there are other diplomatic tools available in the hands of a diplomat, and those tools could have been used in order to see things falling in place...”

Speaking on many other issues at PTI’s New Delhi studios on Wednesday in his first interview after returning to India, Verma spoke about the genesis of the Khalistani movement in Canada, the support it has been getting from local politicians for electoral gains, and the kind of criminal activities the Khalistanis carry out in order to increase their numbers.

“A child that cries the most gets fed first by the mother. Similarly, even though they are only a handful, they shout the most and get the most attention from Canadian political backers,” he said. Verma said that extreme hard-line Khalistanis are only about 10,000 in number, and supporters amount to perhaps 1 lakh in a Sikh population of about 8 lakh.

“To get support they intimidate common Sikhs there, including with threats such as ‘we know where your daughter is studying’,” Verma said.  “The Khalistanis have made Khalistan into a business in Canada. In the name of Khalistan, they do human trafficking, drug trafficking, gun-running, prostitution and all. They earn a lot of money through that and also through gurudwaras and they use part of that money for all nefarious jobs,” he said. “All the dirty things that you can think of, they are involved.”

Recalling the events leading up to the diplomatic dust-up, Verma said he was at the Toronto airport on October 12 when he received a message from the Canadian foreign ministry asking him to come to their office the same evening.

Since he was flying back that evening, Verma sought time on October 13 when he went to the Global Affairs Canada (foreign ministry) office with his deputy high commissioner.

“After a bit of conversation they told me that I, along with five other Indian diplomats and officials, are ‘persons of interest’ in the inquiry of killing of Nijjar. And, therefore there was a request to waive off my diplomatic immunity as well as diplomatic immunity of my colleagues, so that we could be interrogated by RCMP which is this Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the investigating agency there. So, I took that as a message,” Verma said

“It doesn’t happen in diplomacy. Generally speaking, there will 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 a kind of backstabbing that was done to us by our very professional colleagues in Canada,” he said in the first detailed account of the traumatic hours before he and his colleagues had to pack up in a hurry and leave Canada.

“Both are democracies, both are countries of rule of law. We have a huge diasporic interest in Canada. We are good trading partners, investment partners, etc. So, we had been doing well in the overall canvas of our bilateral relations. And, this came to me as a shock,” he added.

Asked how he took the developments, Verma said: “My face did not betray any emotion, not even a wrinkle of worry ... I was happy about the fact that I did not give them a sense of feeling that this man was sad, or that I was afraid.”