India has suspended visa services for Canadian citizens amid a growing row over the killing of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil
Visa service provider BLS posted a message from India’s mission blaming “operational reasons” for the decision, writes the BBC.
Tensions flared this week after Canada said it was investigating “credible allegations” linking India to the killing of the separatist leader.
India angrily rejected the charge, calling it “absurd”.
Analysts say relations between the countries, which have been tense for months, are now at an all-time low.
The move comes a day after India issued an advisory asking its citizens traveling or living in Canada to “exercise utmost caution” in view of “increasing anti-India activities and politically condoned hate crimes and violence crime in Canada”.
Delhi said some recent threats were directed at its diplomats and some Indians “who oppose the anti-India agenda”.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that intelligence agencies were investigating whether “agents of the Indian government” were involved in the 2020 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen whom India designated a terrorist.
Nijjar was shot dead in his vehicle by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple on June 18 in British Columbia.