Amid heightened diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Ottawa, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly on Friday said that the Indian diplomats who remain in the country are “clearly on notice”, PTI reported.

Diplomats from both sides have been expelled or withdrawn in the past week.

Canada will not tolerate diplomats contravening the Vienna Convention or putting the lives of Canadians at risk, Joly was quoted as saying.

The convention is an international treaty establishing a framework for diplomatic relations between countries.

On October 14, the Indian government said it was withdrawing its High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma and some other diplomats from the North American country. It also announced that it had expelled six Canadian diplomats. Ottawa also said that it had expelled six Indian diplomats, but Delhi maintained that the personnel had been withdrawn before the Canadian decision.

This had come as New Delhi rejected diplomatic communication from Canada naming Verma and other Indian envoys as “persons of interest” in an investigation in the country.

While it was unclear which investigation Ottawa was referring to, reports said that it was related to the June 2023 murder of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.

On Friday, Joly compared India to Russia and said that the Canadian police had made allegations of links between Indian diplomats and homicides, death threats and intimidation in the country, PTI reported.

“We’ve never seen that in our history,” she said. “That level of transnational repression cannot happen on Canadian soil. We’ve seen it elsewhere in Europe. Russia has done that in Germany and the UK and we needed to stand firm on this issue.”

Joly said that the Indian diplomats who remain in Canada were on notice.

“Six of them have been expelled, including the High Commissioner in Ottawa,” she said. “Others were mainly from Toronto and Vancouver, and clearly, we won’t tolerate any diplomats that are in contravention of the Vienna Convention.”

Diplomatic ties between India and Canada have been strained for more than a year.

In September 2023, Trudeau told his country’s parliament that intelligence agencies were actively pursuing “credible allegations” tying agents of the Indian government to Nijjar’s killing.

Nijjar was a supporter of Khalistan, an independent nation for Sikhs that some members of the community seek to carve out of India. He was the head of the Khalistan Tiger Force, which is designated a terrorist outfit in India.

New Delhi had rejected Canada’s allegations as “absurd and motivated” and said they were an attempt by Ottawa to divert attention from the fact that it was providing shelter to those threatening India’s sovereignty. India had also ordered Canada to withdraw more than 40 diplomatic staff from the country.

On October 14, the Canadian police also alleged that agents of the Indian government were working with the Lawrence Bishnoi gang to plan and execute violence in the North American country.

Bishnoi, a gangster from Punjab, is currently in Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati Central Jail. The Mumbai Police suspect his involvement in the killing of former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique on Saturday. Bishnoi has also been accused of masterminding the killing of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala on May 29, 2022.

On Thursday, India’s external affairs ministry said that New Delhi had repeatedly asked Canada to extradite individuals believed to be part of Bishnoi’s group, but received no response.

“We informed Canada about the Lawrence Bishnoi gang and its syndicates and requested their provisional arrest and extradition some years back, and also recently,” said ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal. “However, there has been no response from Canada so far.”