NEW DELHI: India on Saturday denied home minister Amit Shah had plotted to target Sikh activists on Canadian soil and said it had officially rebuked Ottawa over the `absurd and baseless` allegation.

Canada is home to the largest Sikh community outside of India, and includes activists for `Khalistan`, a fringe separatist movement seeking an independent state for the religious minority carved out of Indian territory.

Ottawa has previously accused India of orchestrating the 2023 killing in Vancouver of 45-year-old naturalised Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Khalistan campaigner. But this week, Canadian officials said Ottawa had traced a broader campaign targeting Canadian Sikh activists to the highest levels of India`s government, implicating Prime Minister Narendra Modi`s powerful right-hand man.

`The Government of India protests in the strongest terms to the absurd and baseless references made to the Union Home Minister of India,` foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal told reporters.

Jaiswal said that a Canadian diplomat had been summoned and issued a letter to formally protest the accusation against Shah.

Testifying before a Canadian parliamentary committee this week, deputy foreign ministry David Morrison confirmed a Washington Post story implicating Shah in a plot to intimidate and even kill Canadian Sikhs.-AFP