Pranpura, Rewari: In May 2024, ex-CRPF officer and Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) agent Vikash Yadav made a day-trip to his village Pranpura in Haryana. It was a regular day of rest spent at home with his family—eating his mother’s home cooked meals, sleeping, and playing with the family dog.
Nobody knew that he had just come out of a five-month stint at Tihar Jail on bail in an extortion case. Nor did they know that he had been accused of attempting to assassinate an American, on American soil.
Exactly a year earlier, in May 2023, Yadav had allegedly directed a man named Nikhil Gupta to organise the killing of Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York City. The news was broken to Yadav’s family in the same way it was to the rest of the world: on 18 October, via news channels.
Yadav is at the centre of an international assassination plot, skyrocketing to infamy on the FBI’s wanted list. The US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment on 17 October which names Yadav as “CC-1” (co-conspirator) in a murder-for-hire case, alleging that Pannun’s foiled killing was meant to be the first in a string of other politically motivated murders. He was first named as CC-1 in documents submitted by the DoJ in November 2023. Barely three weeks later, the Delhi Police arrested him in a local extortion case, and he was released on bail only in April 2024.
The news of his arrest in Delhi came a day after the DoJ unsealed the indictment, which refers to him as an “Indian government employee”. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs said Thursday that he was not “part of the government of India set up”. The Biden administration’s decision to charge Yadav and release his name is the latest development in a diplomatic flare-up between the Indian government and the governments of the US and Canada.
Back in his village, his family and neighbours are bewildered by the fact that Yadav is suddenly both a wanted man in America, and a criminal in India. To them, he is Pranpura’s “role model”—an athletic, intelligent, kind-hearted man whose dedication to national service earned him a one-way ticket out of Haryana.
He passed the CRPF exam at the age of 22 in 2007 and was admitted as an assistant commandant in 2009, after which there was no turning back for him.
“What is happening can’t be right. He has only served the nation his whole life,” said 65-year-old Sudesh, Yadav’s mother, her anger barely concealed behind her defiant brow. “He’s not wanted in India, he’s wanted in America—that means he’s good for India, right?”
According to Sudesh, their entire family has been in government service. Yadav’s father, Ram Singh Yadav, died on duty in 2007 as a Border Security Force (BSF) officer posted in Tripura. His brother works as a head constable with the Haryana Police. Yadav himself worked for the CRPF, though the US investigation into him has revealed him to be a senior field officer with R&AW.
Village role model
The past two days have taken a toll on Sudesh, whose anxiety over her son’s safety has turned into protective paranoia.
She purses her lips and keeps silent whenever she doesn’t want to answer a question—even as she continues nervously fiddling with her fingers. Her blood pressure had shot up when she first heard the allegations against her son Friday.
She first said she hasn’t seen her son in over a year, before admitting that he had come home for a day in May. He had seemed completely normal, she said, and the family could never have guessed the scale of the crimes he was accused of. She flatly denied that her son was involved in an extortion case.
“Do you believe every false thing you see on the news?” she asked, her eyes flashing. “Listen to the government then, not us.”
In retrospect, Yadav has the makings of a stereotypical spy. The whole story sounds like a film plot, admits one cousin who is 8 years younger than 39-year-old Yadav.
Though the district of Rewari has sent many men to the armed forces, Yadav was rare for securing such a high position at such a young age. His first posting was in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh, after which he spent time in “Naxal areas” in Odisha, the family said. His family was used to not regularly hearing from him. He never used WhatsApp, they said, and over the past year or so, he would always call home from different numbers. The conversations were short and clipped, just to check in on his family’s health.
Described by a neighbour as an “intelligent, sincere boy”, Yadav was a national-level shooter and had briefly nurtured aspirations of taking the UPSC exam.
He was the kind of boy “who naturally had abs”, said his cousin, a BSc graduate currently preparing to take the Haryana state services exam. Vikash, his family claimed, was given the “best athlete” award in his CRPF batch, and his cousin remembered that he received a certificate from former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. He was one of three CRPF officers selected to participate as a shooter in the 2010 Commonwealth Games. He even ran the Delhi marathon, they added.
“He would wake up at 4 am and go running. When this house was being constructed, he would use this window’s iron grills to do squats. He was a motivation for the entire village,” he said.
Yadav’s house is home to his brother’s family and his mother. His cousins live nearby. The large courtyard of his house is surrounded by pink walls, and one section of the red-and-white tiles give way to a tiny garden plot that Yadav himself planted. He was interested in gardening, his family said.
The corner of the courtyard belongs to the family’s purebred Beagle, Tommy—whose favourite family member was Yadav. Tommy would always sleep in Vikash’s bed whenever he visited the village. The dog, temporarily tied up, was in a high state of alert on the day ThePrint visited—constantly barking and growling at local reporters who had come to speak to the family.
“Dogs are very sensitive. I’m sure he knows that something has happened to Vikash,” said his cousin, watching Tommy straining at his leash.
Scared into silence
The village of Pranpura seems to have closed ranks around the Yadav family—they’re all equally concerned about protecting Vikash’s privacy, but don’t understand why Yadav is on the FBI’s most wanted list. A group of concerned men had spent most of the morning trying to make sense of the case, leafing through newspapers and discussing the case in front of a few shops beyond the Yadavs’ house.
A few family members were gathered in the Yadavs’ courtyard to discuss how to handle the media interest as more details on his charges emerge. Vikash’s brother and a cousin talk about how the village should come to a consensus and feign ignorance.
Over the past two days, suspicious figures have been lurking around the house, the family said. They aren’t sure if they’re just curious reporters or if they’re affiliated to Sikh separatists.
The cousin quoted above spent the previous night scrolling through Twitter, looking up the hashtag “Khalistan”. He was shocked to see some of the things being said online—he’d written off Sikh separatism as an issue but remembers sentiments being revived during the farmers’ protests.
Besides worrying about Vikash’s safety, the family is also concerned about being targets because of his alleged actions. They’re afraid of getting Yadav into further trouble, but also reeling from the idea that Yadav could be involved in such high-profile cases.
While they don’t know anything about the possibility of Yadav working for R&AW—and are therefore not sure what to think about the US’s allegations against him—they’re absolutely certain of one thing, that Yadav would never be involved in extortion.
Yadav was arrested on 18 December, 2023 after an FIR was filed against him for extortion and kidnapping, linking him to the gangster Lawrence Bishnoi. He was given bail on 22 April, 2024, after which he visited Pranpura in May.
While the Canadian government recently revealed that they suspect Bishnoi of being involved in the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, the US, so far, has not made any links between Bishnoi and the foiled plot against Pannun.
Sudesh firmly believes that her son could not have been involved in extortion.
“Everyone here thinks that what is happening is wrong! The whole village knows me and they know my sons, they know he is not guilty of this,” she said, calmly and clearly.
Yadav’s cousin interjects to say that if he did extort people for money, their lifestyle certainly didn’t reflect it. Yadav had only owned a second-hand Verna, which he bought in Odisha and drove to Delhi when he moved, before subsequently selling it again.
“If he was doing money laundering or extortion, where is the money?” his cousin asked.
His family’s anecdotes paint him as a caring person who was careful not to let his family worry about his well being and whereabouts.
His cousin narrates an incident to prove how attentive he was. Once, while driving, he spotted an injured kitten on the side of the road. Vikash, he said, immediately pulled over and rescued the kitten, taking it to a nearby hospital for treatment. Despite his intervention, the kitten died 10 days later, and his cousin remembers Vikash trying to hide how upset he was.
“He was just that kind of person. When he was posted in Naxal areas, we would all worry about him. Whenever he’d call—maybe once or twice a month—he’d reassure us all that he was fine, and we always trusted him,” his brother said.
Sudesh quietly said that only families whose sons serve the nation will know what that feeling is like. Every parent wants their child to grow up and become a government servant, and she was no different. Her pride in her son’s accomplishments has never wavered, she said, and she won’t let the “negativity” in the news shake her convictions now.
However, the family—long committed to public service and national duty—has yet to receive any confirmation from government officials regarding whether Vikash Yadav was indeed a R&AW agent or if he is truly guilty of the alleged crimes.
“Maybe in two days we’ll know more and will be able to give you more details? Someone from the government might come and talk to us. Someone from the government has to come, right?” asked his cousin.
Vikash’s mother and brother remained silent, their eyes fixed on the ground, as the question hung in the air.
Also read: Indian spy Vikash Yadav was fighting R&AW in CAT for his job while ‘targeting’ Pannun