Two days after alerting Canadians that air travellers to India would be subjected to extra security screening, federal Transport Minister Anita Anand’s office says those safeguards have been withdrawn.
“The measures for passengers traveling to India have now been lifted,” Anand’s press secretary, Laurent de Casanove, wrote in an email to the National Post on Thursday.
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When questioned about the reason for the quick security shift, de Casanove, said: “For security reasons, specific details regarding these temporary measures cannot be disclosed.”
Later on Thursday, Nathalie Drouin, the national security adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said in a statement that there is no evidence linking Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to alleged criminal activity perpetrated by Indian agents on Canadian soil. He said the same about India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and national security adviser Ajit Doval.
However, Drouin says any suggestion of their complicity is both “speculative and inaccurate.” Drouin’s statement comes after a report in the Globe and Mail indicating that Canada’s security agencies believed that Modi, Jaishankar and Doval knew about a campaign of violence and intimidation targeting Sikh separatists in Canada.
Last month, the RCMP alleged that Indian government agents have been complicit in crimes in Canada, including murder, extortion and intimidation. Canada has accused India of involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen who was designated by India as a terrorist.
India has denied the RCMP’s allegations. Both countries expelled each other’s top diplomats.
This security back-and-forth has also arisen against a backdrop of bomb threats aimed at Air India flights.
In October, an Air India flight headed to Chicago from New Delhi was diverted to Iqaluit because of a bomb threat. An inspection didn’t turn up an explosive device.
However, Anand’s office did not connect that incident with the announcement of new, now lifted, measures.
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