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Nikhil Gupta’s guilty plea in a New York court has done more than close a high-profile murder-for-hire case. It has exposed the limits of India’s selective outrage whenever allegations of state-linked killings abroad are raised.
Gupta admitted his role in a plot to assassinate Khalistani activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. Court documents point to his handler as Vikash Yadav, described as a former Research and Analysis Wing officer, of the Indian Government.
This was not a freelance criminal scheme. It carried the hallmarks of a directed operation. The plea has given significant weight to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations of Indian Government involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada — allegations that India has angrily denied.
Yet India’s refusal to acknowledge its own role in triggering this cycle of violence remains the more uncomfortable truth.
The chain of events did not begin with Trudeau or with plots hatched in North America. It began in 1984, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, from her attacks on Sikhs in Operation Blue Star.
What followed was not spontaneous rioting. It was an organised massacre of Sikhs across Delhi and other cities, carried out with the active participation or complicity of sections of the Congress party.
Indira Gandhi’s son and successor, PM Rajiv Gandhi, infamously remarked that “when a big tree falls, the earth shakes,” a statement widely understood as justification for the slaughter that followed. Thousands of Sikhs were burned alive, hacked to death, and raped while the state looked away.
That violence did not end in 1984. It produced a furious backlash. On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747 flying to London, exploded mid-air off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board.
Among the dead was my high school friend, Mukul Paliwal. He was not a political activist. He was simply a young man on a flight to his ancestral homeland.
His death, like that of every other passenger and crew member, was the direct result of the rage and radicalisation that followed the state-enabled massacre of Sikhs the previous year.
The bombing of Air India Flight 182 was not an isolated act of terrorism. It was retaliation for the 1984 Sikh genocide — a genocide in which the sitting Prime Minister and her son bore ultimate political responsibility. Yet India has never fully confronted this reality.
While some lower-level perpetrators have faced investigation, the political leadership that presided over the organised killing of its own citizens has never been held accountable.
Decades later, when allegations surface that Indian intelligence operatives may be targeting Khalistani figures abroad, India responds with indignation and diplomatic retaliation.
But it refuses to acknowledge that the cycle of violence it now complains about was set in motion by its own actions in 1984. The same establishment that shielded those responsible for the anti-Sikh pogroms now demands that the world accept its denials regarding operations overseas.
This selective memory is unsustainable. If India expects other countries to investigate and prosecute political assassinations and targeted killings, it cannot continue to protect its own former prime ministers from historical accountability. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi presided over one of the worst massacres of civilians in India’s post-independence history. Isn’t it time India acknowledged this disgrace and considered charging them posthumously with crimes against humanity?
The death of my friend Mukul Paliwal on Air India Flight 182 was not an accident of history. It was a consequence of the violence unleashed in 1984. Until India is willing to confront that original sin with honesty, its protests against foreign allegations will continue to lack moral authority. A nation that has not delivered justice for the organised killing of thousands of its own citizens cannot credibly claim victimhood when others raise questions about its actions abroad.
Gupta’s guilty plea has renewed focus on India’s external operations. But the deeper reckoning remains internal. Until India examines who was truly responsible for the 1984 Sikh genocide, it will remain trapped in the cycle of violence it helped create.
Akshay Sharma is a former Gartner analyst and contributor to both the SWIFT protocol for International Banking and ARINC 629 Databus used in Boeing and Airbus aircraft, for fly-by-wire. He served as CTO for firms supporting the World Bank, India’s DRDO, and Air Force.
Now Chief Technology Evangelist for an AI/ML company, he is a board member of Somy Ali’s nonprofit No More Tears, and has over 40 published essays in ThePrint.IN.
He draws inspiration from Swami Vivekananda’s teachings, and is a descendent of Maharishi Bhardwaj, inventor of the Vimanas.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.