New Delhi: A United States District Court Tuesday formally accepted the guilty plea of Nikhil Gupta, the 54-year-old Indian who was charged in an alleged 2023 plot to kill Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
The court order confirmed that Gupta “entered the guilty plea knowingly and voluntarily and that there was a factual basis for the guilty plea”.
“IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the defendant’s guilty plea is accepted,” it added.
Sentencing is scheduled for May.
Gupta entered his guilty plea last week before US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan. By doing so, he avoids trial. Pannun is a US citizen whom India has designated a terrorist.
The US Attorney’s Office last week said in a statement that Gupta had “pled guilty to all three counts contained in the Second Superseding Indictment, charging him with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, in connection with his efforts to murder a US citizen in New York City”.
The statement quoted FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky saying that the killing had been averted by American law enforcement.
“Nikhil Gupta was a key participant in a murder-for-hire plot against a US citizen, a murder that was prevented thanks to the actions of US law enforcement,” he said, adding: “The US citizen became a target of transnational repression solely for exercising their freedom of speech.”
FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr went further. “At the direction and coordination of an Indian government employee, Nikhil Gupta plotted to assassinate a United States citizen on American soil, facilitating a foreign adversary’s unlawful effort to silence a vocal critic of the Indian government,” he said, as quoted in the statement.
US Attorney Jay Clayton said Gupta had miscalculated. “He [Gupta] thought that from outside this country, he could kill someone in it without consequence, simply for exercising their American right to free speech. But he was wrong, and he will face justice,” Clayton said.
Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic on 30 June 2023, and extradited to the US on 14 June, 2024.
In an interview with ThePrint in January 2025, Gupta had denied knowing former Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) officer Vikash Yadav, a co-accused in the case, and alleged that he was being “pressured to plead guilty” in the case.
Yadav is accused of contacting Gupta, a suspected drug and arms dealer, to carry out Pannun’s murder. He was dismissed from service and is also being prosecuted on kidnapping and extortion charges in a case unrelated to the Pannun matter.