Indian policemen stand guard outside the entrance of the Canadian High Commission, in New Delhi on October 15, 2024. India and Canada each expelled the other's ambassador and five other top diplomats, after New Delhi said its envoy had been named among "persons of interest" following the killing of a Sikh separatist leader. Photo: VCG

India and Canada have each expelled six diplomats in tit-for-tat moves as the row over last year's assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil intensifies, with analysts saying that New Delhi-Ottawa relations stand at a historic low, while putting Washington in an awkward position as well. 

India on Monday asked six Canadian diplomats in New Delhi to leave the country by Saturday hours after it decided to withdraw its high commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma and other "targeted diplomats and officials" from Canada.

Canada also announced the expulsion of six Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner on Monday local time. 

The mutual expulsions came after the Canadian government said on Sunday that the Indian high commissioner and other diplomats are "persons of interest" in the case of murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader, and alleged a broader effort to target Indian dissidents in Canada.

New Delhi and Ottawa have been locked in a diplomatic row since September 2023, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged that Indian agents played a role in the murder of Nijjar near Vancouver in June. India denied the allegations and described them as "absurd and motivated."

In the latest statement on Monday, India's Ministry of External Affairs said "the government of India strongly rejects these preposterous imputations and ascribes them to the political agenda of the Trudeau government that is centered around vote bank politics," calling the Canadian move "a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains."

Canada's foreign ministry said their decision to expel the Indian diplomats "was made with great consideration" and only after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gathered ample, clear and concrete evidence which identified six individuals as persons of interest in the Nijjar case.

The latest row is a blow to the already strained ties between India and Canada, which has probably reached the lowest point since diplomatic ties were established, Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Canada withdrew more than 40 diplomats from India in October 2023 after New Delhi asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence, according to a Reuters report. An expert with Ottawa's Carleton University told Reuters that "it is hard to see at this juncture that a return to normalcy will happen any time in the foreseeable future."

Despite the uncompromising and unflinching gestures on both sides, given the alliance between the US and Canada and the US' attempts to woo India for geopolitical purposes in recent years, Washington is likely to appease the two countries to avoid a complete breakdown in New Delhi-Ottawa relations, according to Qian. 

Reconciling India and Canada will be a tough task for the US, and to some extent, it is awkward for the US as well, Qian said.  

In 2023, the US also alleged that Indian agents were involved in an attempted assassination plot against another Sikh separatist leader in New York, and said that it had indicted an Indian national working at the behest of an unnamed Indian government official.

An Indian government committee investigating Indian involvement in the foiled murder plot will meet US officials in Washington this week, the State Department said on Monday.