Hardeep Singh Nijjar

India's foreign ministry says Canada is trying to smear New Delhi, as the country doubles down on rejecting claims its government officials have worked with criminal gangs in the extortion, coercion and murder of Canadian citizens.

The federal government expelled six Indian diplomats on Monday after the RCMP said it had credible evidence that Indian agents played a role in violent crimes on Canadian soil, including extortion, coercion and murder of Canadian citizens.

Ottawa's decision on Monday to expel India's top envoy and five other diplomats is just the latest development in tensions that have simmered for months between the two countries.

Canada's decision to expel New Delhi's top envoy and five other diplomats is front-page news in India, as an analyst wonders how other countries will respond.

Three Indian nationals accused of murdering Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar are due to face court in Surrey, B.C., on Tuesday over the killing that triggered a major diplomatic rift with New Delhi.

India's envoy to Canada is scheduled to speak publicly today for the first time since the RCMP made arrests related to a homicide that has roiled tensions between the two countries.

A decade ago this month, lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and his friend Hardeep Singh Nijjar were in Geneva to deliver a petition calling on the United Nations to declare widespread killings of Sikhs in India in 1984 a genocide.

India restored electronic visa services for Canadian nationals, an Indian foreign ministry official said on Wednesday, two months after Canada alleged the South Asian nation was involved in the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Canada.

Canada's Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez and the RCMP say an investigation is underway into what they call "threats" against Air India, after an online video warned people not to fly on the airline on Nov. 19.

India reportedly wants 41 of 62 Canadian diplomats out of the country by early next week — a striking, if largely anticipated, deepening of the rift that erupted last month following Trudeau's explosive allegations in the House of Commons. 

The attacks seem to have hit institutions controlled by the government, but not the core infrastructure from which federal departments and agencies operate.

Eby's statement came on the same day that gurdwara councils in B.C. and Ontario called for the immediate suspension of all security and intelligence agreements with India and repeated their calls for a public inquiry into the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is calling for India's help to investigate the killing of a Sikh independence activist on Canadian soil, while New Delhi says Canada has provided no information on the case.

Until this week, Sukhwinder Dhillon was set on making his first trip back to India in years sometime in the next few months.

Experts warn a months-long diplomatic row with India is only just beginning — and they suggest that better transparency around the investigation of a Sikh leader's killing and ramped-up efforts against foreign interference can inhibit the emboldening of other countries.