US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti has told his team in India that relations between the two countries could get worse for a time due to the diplomatic spat between India and Canada over the killing of a Sikh leader, US-based politics-focused newspaper Politico quoted an unnamed official of State Department as saying.

Ambassador Garcetti also has said the US may need to reduce its contacts with Indian officials for an undefined period of time, it reported.

The diplomatic spat between India and Canada started when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on September 19 said that it was “actively pursuing credible allegations” linking Indian government agents to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia in June.

However, the US Embassy in India dismissed the claims that India-US ties may get worse amid the ongoing India-Canada diplomatic standoff saying that Ambassador Garcetti is working hard to advance the partnership of the US with India, Hindustan Times reported.

Read: Canada worked closely with US on India’s possible link to killing: source

Dismissing these reports, the US Embassy said that the US envoy is working hard every day to deepen the partnership between the people and governments of the United States and India.

Earlier on September 28, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged India to cooperate with a Canadian investigation into the murder of Sikh leader during a meeting with Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Thursday, a U.S. official said.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple on June 18 in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. Nijjar supported a Sikh homeland in the form of an independent Khalistani state and was designated by India as a “terrorist” in July 2020.

The spat resulted in the expelling of envoys from both countries as Trudeau approached its allies to urge India to cooperate in the investigations into the murder of Nijjar.