A busy week for Indian diplomacy began with an explosive Canadian press conference on Monday. Senior Canadian police officials accused Indian diplomats of being involved in “criminal” activities on Canadian soil, ranging from murder and targeted assassinations to extortion, intimidation and coercion of members of Canada’s Sikh community.

They alleged that Indian diplomats – including the high commissioner himself – were not only complicit in but also involved in the high-profile assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist who was shot dead last June outside a gurdwara in a Vancouver suburb have been linked to other murders on Canadian soil. They claimed the diplomats even worked with a gang led by India’s most notorious mafia boss to do their dirty work.

Two days later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doubled down on his claims. Testifying at a public inquiry, he said Canada had clear intelligence linking Indian diplomats to “drive-by shootings, home invasions, violent extortion and even murder in and across Canada.” India, Trudeau added, had made a “terrible mistake” by violating Canadian sovereignty.

It was a significant escalation of a diplomatic dispute that has torpedoed relations between India and Canada. It began last year when Trudeau appeared in Parliament and said there were “credible allegations” linking the Indian government to the killing of Nijjar – an allegation that India dismissed as “credible allegations.” absurd”.

Since then, allegations of an Indian campaign of cross-border violence and harassment have emerged not only in Canada, but also in the United States, Britain and Pakistan, where prominent Sikh activists say they have received threats to their lives.

Western officials and the Sikh community allege it is a wide-ranging – if often clumsily implemented – policy of cross-border repression of the Sikh diaspora by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Canadian officials reportedly say they have evidence that orders containing alleged threats and harassment came from the highest levels of the Indian government, all the way up to powerful Home Minister Amit Shah, seen as Modi’s right-hand man.

India has repeatedly denied all allegations and stressed that such killings are not government policy, and Canada’s recent allegations were met with a torrent of outraged denials. New Delhi called the claims “absurd insinuations” and “ridiculous” statements and accused Trudeau of a political vendetta. They have also accused Canada of providing a safe haven for Sikh terrorists.

But on Friday morning, India was confronted with new allegations, this time from the USA. An “Indian government employee” named Vikash Yadav has been charged in a plot to murder a prominent Sikh activist and U.S. citizen, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York last year. When the murder was planned, Yadav was working as an intelligence officer in the office of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was a long-time employee of the Indian government.

The new indictment added more details to the alleged murder plot against Pannun, which was first uncovered by U.S. Justice Department prosecutors late last year.

In what reads like the script of a B-movie, US investigators claimed that an Indian agent in New Delhi – previously referred to only as CC1 but now known as Yadav – hired an Indian middleman in New York to to help orchestrate a plot to assassinate Pannun. Panuun, a lawyer and US citizen, is a known Sikh separatist from the Fire Gang and has been designated a terrorist by the Indian government.

However, it is alleged that the plot was foiled after it emerged that the assassin, Yadav, and his middleman, who was recruited to kill Pannun, was an undercover US officer. The alleged middleman, named Nikhil Gupta, fled to the Czech Republic, where he was arrested and later deported back to the United States, where he pleaded not guilty. On Friday, the FBI released a wanted notice against Yadav and said it expected the US to seek his extradition from India, where he is believed to still be “at large”.

India has tried to portray the incidents in India and Canada as unrelated, but US investigators say they are inextricably linked. When the Pannun assassination attempt was being planned, Gupta had reportedly mentioned a “big target” in Canada just days before Nijjar was shot. Then, hours after Nijjar’s death, Yadav allegedly sent his intermediary a video clip of Nijjar’s body.

The Justice Department made clear that it believed Pannun’s killing was “a serious example” of a growing trend of cross-border repression – a term defined as foreign governments taking violent and illegal actions outside their own territory. Without directly mentioning the obvious geopolitical implications, they also stressed that they would hold those responsible accountable “regardless of their position or proximity to power.”

India is now seeking to deny allegations that it has become a rogue international actor, illegally violating the territory of not one but two of its Western allies. Not long ago, such killings were never considered a part of India’s intelligence plan. But since coming to power a decade ago, Modi’s powerful nationalist agenda has come to dominate his agenda at home and abroad as he seeks to propel India to superpower status.

In an earlier Guardian investigation that linked India to up to 20 killings across the border in Pakistan since 2020, intelligence officials described how the Modi government was encouraged to carry out attacks on dissidents on foreign soil. They said Israel’s notorious intelligence agency Mossad and the killing of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi embassy in 2018, were directly cited as examples to follow.

“What the Saudis did was very effective,” an intelligence officer told the Guardian earlier this year. “Not only do you get rid of your enemy, but you also send a frightening message, a warning, to the people working against you. Every intelligence agency has done this. Our country cannot be strong without exercising power over our enemies.” Officially, the Indian government has repeatedly denied that this is its policy.

The allegations have yet to be proven in court in both Canada and the U.S., and Canada has not yet filed charges against Indian government officials, only describing them as “persons of interest” in the case.

But any confirmation of the claim would confirm that there has been a radical reinterpretation of the role of India’s foreign intelligence agencies under the Modi government. This shows that Modi’s long-standing domestic suppression of dissent – targeting everyone from opposition politicians to activists to NGOs – has now reached beyond international borders, particularly targeting Sikhs associated with the separatist Khalistan movement, which is far more common in the diaspora.

There was a marked contrast in the way India responded to both cases, which observers say is symptomatic of different geopolitical agendas. In the case of Canada, where India has optimistically claimed there is no evidence, analysts say relations have sunk so low that India has little to lose by refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

However, India can ill afford to make Washington a similar enemy. Following the Pannun indictment, they launched a high-level investigation into the US allegations that traveled to Washington this week. The Indian Foreign Ministry also confirmed that Yadav was no longer a government employee.

So far, the White House has tried to take a similarly cautious diplomatic line, apparently in an effort not to upset India, a key strategic and economic ally. But in its indictment, the Justice Department made clear that it would not allow geopolitics to interfere in its prosecution of the case.

“To the governments around the world that might consider such criminal activity and to the communities they would target,” said Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, “let there be no doubt that the Department of Justice committed to preventing and exposing these conspiracies.”