DM Monitoring
WASHINGTON: A US court has decided to formally prosecute Indian citizen Nikhil Gupta for conspiring to assassinate Sikh leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannu.
The court also issued an order for confiscation of $15,000 recovered from the accused. The money was provided to him by a former Indian intelligence officer.
The development comes after Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national charged in the case, was extradited to the US from a prison in Prague earlier this year. The FBI has accused Indian agents of involvement in an assassination attempt on Pannun, a dual US-Canadian citizen, saying Pannun was targeted for exercising his “First Amendment rights” to free speech.
According to the US indictment, former Indian intelligence officer Yadav was the mastermind behind the plot to murder Pannun and he recruited Gupta in May 2023 to orchestrate the assassination in exchange for getting a case against him in India dismissed.Earlier, The United States has charged a former Indian intelligence officer for allegedly directing a foiled plot to assassinate an American citizen who advocates for Khalistan – an independent Sikh state that would be carved out of India.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said on Thursday that it had registered “murder-for-hire and money laundering charges” against Vikash Yadav for trying to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
The indictment of Yadav, for the first time, implicates the Indian government directly in the attempted assassination of a dissident. The Indian government has said it is co-operating with the ongoing investigation in the US. It has not responded to the specific charges against Mr Yadav yet. The development comes after Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national also charged in the case, was extradited to the US from a prison in Prague earlier this year.
The FBI has accused Indian agents of involvement in an assassination attempt on Pannun, a dual US-Canadian citizen, saying Pannun was targeted for exercising his “First Amendment rights” to free speech. “The FBI will not tolerate acts of violence or other efforts to retaliate against those residing in the U.S. for exercising their constitutionally protected rights,” said FBI director Christopher Wray in a statement. India has labelled Pannun a terrorist, though he denies the allegation, claiming to be an activist advocating for Khalistan.
According to the US indictment, Yadav was the mastermind behind the plot to murder Pannun and he recruited Gupta in May 2023 to orchestrate the assassination in exchange for getting a case against him in India dismissed.
“In or about June 2023, in furtherance of the assassination plot, Yadav provided Gupta with personal information about the victim, including the victim’s home address in New York City, phone numbers associated with the victim, and details about the victim’s day-to-day conduct,” the indictment states.
On Thursday, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, stated that the individual referred to as “CC-1” in the US Justice Department’s indictment is no longer employed by the Indian government.
However, he did not provide a specific name, leaving it unclear whether he was referring to Yadav, who is widely speculated to be the same person.
In response to Yadav’s indictment, Pannun said the attempt on his life on American soil was a “blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism, which has become a challenge to America’s sovereignty and threat to freedom of speech and democracy.”
