Joly said India had threatened to unilaterally revoke the diplomats’ official status by Friday unless they left. This move, she said, was unreasonable and unprecedented and clearly violated the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.

“Given the implications of India’s actions on the safety of our diplomats, we have facilitated their safe departure from India,” she told a news conference.

“If we allow the norm of diplomatic immunity to be broken, no diplomats anywhere on the planet would be safe. So for this reason, we will not reciprocate,” she said. The 41 diplomats were accompanied by 42 dependents.

New Delhi last month asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited what he said was credible evidence of a potential link between Indian agents and the murder in June of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, who was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in a Vancouver suburb.

India has dismissed as absurd Trudeau’s suspicions that its agents were linked to the murder of Nijjar, a Canadian citizen whom New Delhi had labeled a “terrorist.”