India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the country will “definitely look into” any proof that it has ties to a plan to kill a US official.
The US charged an Indian man in November with planning to kill a Sikh rebel leader in New York.
The claims will not hurt relations between India and the US, Mr. Modi told the Financial Times.
This is the first time he’s talked about it in public.
“We are ready to look into anything a citizen of ours has done, good or bad.” “We will stand by the rule of law,” the prime minister told the newspaper.
What the US knew before they killed a Sikh rebel
The US claims to have stopped a plan to kill a Sikh separatist.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the person who was tried to be killed, is a citizen of both the US and Canada and a vocal backer of the Khalistan movement, which wants a separate Sikh state.
US prosecutors said that a man named Nikhil Gupta had paid a hitman $100,000 (£79,000) in cash to kill Mr. Pannun. The hitman was said to have been told to do it by a government official in India.
India has called Mr. Pannun a terrorist, but he says the claim is false and that he is an agitator.
These claims came about two months after Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, said that India was involved in the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Sikh rebel leader.
He was shot and killed outside of a Sikh mosque in Canada on June 18, 2018.
India has strongly rejected the claims and said that Canada is giving refuge to “Khalistani terrorists and extremists” who are a threat to India’s safety.
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Delhi has also said over and over that Ottawa has not yet provided solid proof to support the claim.
The diplomatic fight has made things worse between India and Canada.
Sikh rebels in the West have often asked for Khalistan, and the Indian government has often responded harshly.
In India, the Khalistan movement reached its peak in the 1980s, when there was a violent uprising in Punjab state, which is mostly made up of Sikhs. It was put down by force and doesn’t have much of an impact in India anymore, but some Sikhs who live in places like Canada, Australia, and the UK still like it.
Analysts say that the latest claims of killing Sikh separatists without a trial could hurt India’s growing relationship with the US.
That being said, Mr. Modi told the Financial Times that he is sure the friendship will get better.
“There is strong bipartisan support for the strengthening of this relationship, which is a clear indicator of a mature and stable partnership,” he stated.”I don’t think it is appropriate to link a few incidents with diplomatic relations between the two countries,” he told me.
The Indian leader also said that the country was worried about the “activities of certain extremist groups based overseas.”
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