Canada’s allegations against India may be based on intelligence collected by US or UK: Foreign affairs expert

Foreign affairs expert Robinder Sachdev has said Canada’s allegations against India may be based on intelligence collected by America or England on their own or it may be that Canada asked them to find out some information.

Foreign affairs expert Robinder Sachdev has said Canada's allegations against India may be based on intelligence collected by America or England on their own or it may be that Canada asked them to find out some information. Sachdev was referring to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's allegations that the Indian government was behind the fatal shooting of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.

Najjar, who was wanted in India, was gunned down outside a Gurdwara, in a parking area in Canada's Surrey, British Columbia on June 18. Canada recently announced that the intelligence it is using to investigate the Nijjar case has got inputs from one of the other five Eye country members.

The Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the US and the UK. Sachdev said: "Most probably, given the geographic understandings, it would have been maybe America or England who had collected some intelligence on their own, or Canada asked them to find out some information that would also be so."

"And they collected some information and passed it back to Canada. So this is certainly becoming a concerning matter. Canada has an inquiry underway already, and in that inquiry also, I think the Five Eye countries would be collaborating with Canada when they're sharing the information." The foreign affairs expert said Canada, the US are pressing India to share or cooperate but India is pushing it back. "So, the Canadians are continuing with the inquiry. The problem will get bigger now when the Canadians say that their inquiry is completed, maybe in two weeks, four weeks, four months, whichever time, then it will be a decision time for Canada, the US, England to decide what to do and for India also to decide what to do."

Speaking on the Five Eyes, Sachdev said it is the most sophisticated electronic intelligence gathering network of five countries. It was set up just after the Second World War, initially with the United States and England for intelligence sharing because during the Second World War, they were already intelligent sharing After the Second World War, the two countries added Canada and then added Australia and New Zealand as a network where intelligence would be shared between these countries.

"They have highly sophisticated and very deep capabilities and technologies. The American National Security Agency. The British have the general communication headquarters, the GCHQ. The GCHQ has very deep capabilities of gathering signal intelligence from telephonic, wireless, satellite, whichever signals, and then of course, the Australians and New Zealand, they have their own," Sachdev said. "So mainly, I think the work which they are able to focus more is electronic intelligence, which they call as signal intelligence. But at the same time, these five countries also hugely collaborate in what they call human intelligence, physical spying by physical people. They do both of these things and collect that information and share with each other," he said.

Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen has said it was "shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners" that led the Trudeau administration to make the claim of a potential link between "agents" of the Indian government and the killing of separatist Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar. "I will say this was a matter of shared intelligence information. There was a lot of communication between Canada and the United States about this, and I think that's as far as I'm comfortable going," Cohen told Canada's CTV News in an interview.

However, Cohen refrained from detailing the type of intelligence shared by the Five Eyes partners with the Canadian government. (ANI)

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