On October 17, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) released an indictment of Indian citizen Vikash Yadav for his role in the foiled plot to murder Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. The charges listed in the indictment are murder-for-hire and money laundering. The indictment also mentioned that 39-year-old Yadav is an “employee of the Government of India’s Cabinet Secretariat, which houses India’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing.”
The indictment alleges that Yadav, along with co-conspirator Nikhil Gupta, hatched a plan to assassinate Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York City in 2023. Pannun, an attorney and activist who leads the advocacy group Sikhs For Justice in the U.S. is a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S.
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According to the indictment, Yadav “orchestrated the plot from India and directed Gupta to hire a hitman to murder the victim” sometime in 2023. In June, soon after another separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed in Canada, Gupta is supposed to have given the go-ahead for the assassination, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) foiled.
“Today’s charges are a grave example of the increase in lethal plotting and other forms of violent transnational repression targeting diaspora communities in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “To the governments around the world who may be considering such criminal activity and to the communities they would target, let there be no doubt that the Department of Justice is committed to disrupting and exposing these plots and to holding the wrongful actors accountable no matter who they are or where they reside.”
It is expected that the United States will seek Yadav’s extradition. Earlier, in June, Gupta was also extradited to the U.S., where he pleaded not guilty.