Trudeau, Modi in same room for first time since Canada publicly accused India of Sikh leader's assassination

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sat down in the same room as India's prime minister for the first time since he publicly accused Narendra Modi's government of involvement in the assassination of a Canadian Sikh activist and Indian nationals were later arrested in B.C.

Trudeau and Modi were both around the same G7 table in Italy during an outreach session on Friday. They were positioned about six seats away from one another, according to video footage. India was one of the countries invited to observe this year's annual summit of the leading advanced democratic economies.

Modi held a series of bilateral meetings with world leaders including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but does not have a meeting scheduled with Trudeau on Friday, according to Trudeau's public itinerary.

The last time Trudeau met with Modi in person was during the fraught G20 summit in India in September 2023. That same month, after returning from the trip, Trudeau rose in the House of Commons and accused India's government of involvement in the brazen shooting of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Nijjar was brazenly shot and killed by masked gunmen in his pickup truck in June 2023 in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C.

Nijjar was a supporter of a Sikh homeland in the form of an independent Khalistani state. He had been deemed a «terrorist» by India's government and accused of leading a militant separatist group — which his supporters denied.

«Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India» and Nijjar's killing, Trudeau said.

Since then, four Indian nationals — Karan Brar,