The United States has charged a former Indian intelligence officer with masterminding a murder-for hire plot against a prominent Sikh separatist in New York City last year.
Late on Thursday, an unsealed US indictment named Vikash Yadav as the Indian spy US prosecutors believe attempted to orchestrate the assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US citizen, in New York.
Pannun, a lawyer and activist, is a known firebrand leader of the Khalistan movement which fights for an independent state for Sikhs in Punjab, and which is banned in India. Pannun had been designated a terrorist by the Indian government.
Pannun called the plot to kill him 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”.
The eye-opening details of the planned murder-for-hire plot against Pannun were first disclosed last year by federal prosecutors. In the first indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that an agent of the Indian government – previously referred to as CC1, but now revealed as Yadav – had recruited an Indian middleman to help him arrange for Pannun to be killed.
However, the assassin that was hired for the job turned out to be an undercover US agent, foiling the plot. The middleman, Nikhil Gupta, was later apprehended in the Czech Republic and deported back to the US, where he entered a not guilty plea.
The fresh indictment clearly alleges that at the time of the murder being planned out, Yadav was working directly under the office of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. “Yadav was employed by the government of India’s Cabinet Secretariat, which is a part of the Indian Prime Minister’s Office,” states the indictment.
It also explicitly lays out previous roles that Yadav had in the Indian government, including in the police. “Yadav is a citizen and resident of India, and he directed the plot to assassinate the Victim from India,” the indictment alleges.
Anne Milgram of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said: “We charge that Yadav, an employee of the Indian government, used his position of authority and access to confidential information to direct the attempted assassination of an outspoken critic of the Indian government here on US soil.”
The unsealing of the indictment came days after Canada expelled six Indian diplomats after linking them to the 2023 murder of the Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. India also ordered the expulsion of Canadian diplomats and denies Canada’s allegations.
On Wednesday, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, accused India of violating Canadian sovereignty, saying Indian officials had been linked to a campaign of violence against Sikh activists which involved “drive-by shootings, home invasions, violent extortion and even murder in and across Canada”.
The statements made by Canadian police and US prosecutors have fueled allegations that the Modi government has been conducting a campaign of transnational repression targeting Sikh diaspora who are vocal supporters of the Khalistan movement. Mounting numbers of prominent figures the Sikh community in the US, UK and Canada have received warnings of threat to their lives.
“The FBI will not tolerate acts of violence or other efforts to retaliate against those residing in the US for exercising their constitutionally protected rights,” the FBI director, Christopher Wray, said in a statement.
An Indian government committee investigating Indian involvement in the foiled murder plot met with US officials in Washington on Tuesday, a meeting that Washington described as productive.
The United States had been pushing India to look into the US justice department’s claim that an Indian intelligence official directed plans to assassinate Pannun.
The accusations have tested Washington and Ottawa’s relations with India, often viewed by the west as a counterbalance to China.
India has labeled Sikh separatists as “terrorists” and threats to its security. Sikh separatists demand an independent homeland known as Khalistan to be carved out of India. An insurgency in India during the 1980s and 1990s led to tens of thousands of deaths.
