NEW DELHI (AP) — India on Saturday formally protested the Canadian government’s claim that it ordered the targeting of the country’s powerful home minister, Amit Shah. Sikh activists in Canadahe called it “absurd and unfounded”.

Relations between the two countries soured after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statement last year There were credible allegations Indian government had links to the assassination Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. India vehemently denied the accusation.

New Delhi, long concerned about Sikh separatist groups, increasingly accuses the Canadian government of alienating separatists from a once-powerful movement. an independent Sikh homelandIt is known as Khalistan.

Diplomatic row led to expulsion each other’s best diplomats last month.

“The Government of India protests in the strongest possible terms against the absurd and baseless references made to the Union Home Minister of India,” Indian external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters on Saturday.

He also said a Canadian diplomat in New Delhi was summoned on Friday and distributed a letter to formally protest the allegations. “Such irresponsible actions will have serious consequences for bilateral relations,” he said.

Canada’s Deputy Foreign Minister David Morrison On Tuesday, the national security committee told lawmakers that it had confirmed Shah’s name to The Washington Post, which first reported the allegations. Morrison did not say how Canada knew of the Shah’s alleged involvement.

Canadian officials have called the allegations absurd, saying they have shared evidence with India, which has repeatedly denied that evidence has been presented.

Nijjar was a local leader of the Khalistan movement, which is banned in India. India had declared him a terrorist in 2020 and was seeking his arrest for his alleged involvement in an attack on a Hindu priest in India at the time of his death. For nearly three decades he lived in Canada, where about 2% of the population is Sikh.