New Delhi: The US Justice Department has slapped an Indian national named Nikhil Gupta with murder-for-hire charges in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Sikhs for Justice chief Gurpatwant Singh Pannun that failed.
The charges were made in an indictment unsealed Wednesday before a New York district court — for the Southern District.
According to a statement released by the Justice Department, US prosecutors have claimed that Gupta, 52, who resides in India, conspired with others to carry out the assassination on directions of an Indian government employee in a “$100,000” deal.
The employee, referred to as “CC-1” in the statement, is said to have “variously described himself as a ‘Senior Field Officer’ with responsibilities in ‘Security Management’ and ‘Intelligence’”, and “referenced previously serving in India’s Central Reserve Police Force and receiving “officer training” in “battle craft” and “weapons”.
Gupta was arrested by Czech authorities on 30 June earlier this year on the basis of an extradition treaty between the US and the Czech Republic, the statement says.
The US Attorney for the Southern District Court of New York, Damian Williams, said Gupta conspired from India to assassinate “a US citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs”.
“We will not tolerate efforts to assassinate US citizens on US soil and stand ready to investigate, thwart, and prosecute anyone who seeks to harm and silence Americans here or abroad,” Williams said in the statement.
Pannun has been declared an individual terrorist in India, and Sikhs for Justice banned as a terror outfit by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
In the statement, the US Justice Department acknowledges his calls for secession, saying “the victim is a vocal critic of the Indian government and leads a US-based organisation that advocates for the secession of Punjab, a state in northern India that is home to a large population of Sikhs, an ethnoreligious minority group in India”.
The “victim”, it adds, “has publicly called for some or all of Punjab to secede from India and establish a Sikh sovereign state called Khalistan, and the Indian government has banned the victim and his separatist organisation from India”.
The matter of the US investigating an alleged Indian plot against Pannun was brought to light in a Financial Times report last week. It came weeks after Canada said it was looking into “credible allegations” of a “potential link” between the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia and “Indian agents”.
ThePrint reached Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi on call for a comment on the US indictment, but he declined to comment.
The unsealing of the indictment comes on the same day the MEA said a “high-level” committee had been constituted on 18 November to look into the “relevant aspects” of the case.
“Government of India will take necessary follow-up action based on the findings of the enquiry committee,” it added in a statement.
The ‘conspiracy’
The Justice Department has claimed that Gupta was hired by an Indian government employee, and signed a $100,000 deal to hire an assassin to kill Pannun.
Gupta, the department says in the statement, reached out to a person whom he believed was a “criminal associate” to look for a hitman in New York. However, the purported criminal associate was a “source” of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and managed to get him in touch with an undercover officer of the DEA posing as a “hitman”.
The statement says “CC-1” and Gupta agreed to pay the purported hitman an advance of $15,000. This amount was handed over to the “hitman” by another associate of the duo at Manhattan in New York around or on 9 June 2023, it adds.
Around the same time, the Justice Department claims, the Indian government employee handed over all the details of Pannun such as his daily routine, phone number and New York address to Gupta, which he passed on to the undercover officer of the DEA.
The US Justice Department also makes a reference to the killing of Nijjar, whom it called an “associate” of Pannun and another “leader of the Sikh separatist movement”.
The department says that, around the next day after Nijjar’s killing in June, Gupta told the undercover officer that the chief of the Khalistan Tiger Force “was also the target”, and that he and his accomplice “have so many targets”. But “now no need to wait”, he is alleged to have said in the aftermath of Nijjar’s killing.
The department claims that Gupta got a message from his instructor with an article related to Pannun and a message that it was a priority of theirs to assassinate him.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram hailed the foiling of the plot in the statement. “When a foreign government employee allegedly committed the brazen act of recruiting an international narcotics trafficker to murder a US citizen on US soil, DEA was there to stop the plot.
“I want to recognise the outstanding work of the DEA New York Field Division for their leadership in this investigation, the prosecution team at the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for pursuing today’s indictment, and our federal and global law enforcement partners for their assistance,” she said.
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