On Thursday, a federal indictment was unsealed revealing charges against Vikash Yadav, identified by authorities as an Indian intelligence officer, accusing him of orchestrating an assassination plot in the United States from India. The alleged target is Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a New York-based lawyer and critic of the Indian government who has called for the secession of the Punjab region from the country. Authorities had arrested another suspect in the assassination plot last year, Nikhil Gupta, who according to the indictment was “recruited” by Yadav to “orchestrate the assassination of the Victim in the United States.”
An American citizen, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun leads a U.S.-based Sikh secessionist organization, advocating for the establishment of a sovereign state for the ethnoreligious minority in the Punjab region, where 77% of the 21 million Sikhs in India reside. Sikhs make up 57% of the population of Punjab. Pannun released a statement calling the plot against him “transnational terrorism” and a “threat to freedom of speech and democracy.”
Vikash Yadav is referred to in the DOJ’s documents as an officer with the part of the Indian government that houses its intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). They allege that Gupta, at Yadav’s direction, used an American criminal contact to plan Pannun’s murder, who turned out to be a confidential source working with the DEA. The federal agency then took over and foiled the plot.
The indictment also alleges that this assassination was to be the first of many in the United States, as Gupta told the federal agent he had unwittingly hired for the killing that they have “so many targets.” Gupta also told him that Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another vocal Sikh separatist who was assassinated in Canada, “was also a target.” Nijjar was shot and killed in an ambush by 3 masked men outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia.
The conspiracy around Nijjar’s murder is of ongoing concern in Canadian-Indian relations, as just a few days before the unsealing of this indictment, Canada expelled India’s top diplomat and five others, accusing them of being part of a vast criminal network responsible for extortion and murder of India’s critics in the country. Canada is home to the largest foreign population of Sikhs in the world. “The decision to expel these individuals was made with great consideration,’’ said Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, adding that evidence against India’s diplomatic mission was “ample, clear, and concrete.”
India has responded by expelling an equal number of Canada’s diplomats.
