The Justice Department on Thursday announced criminal charges against an Indian government official who specialized in intelligence in connection with a foiled plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.
Vikash Yadav, 39, is charged with murder-for-hire in connection with a planned killing that prosecutors first disclosed last year and which prosecutors say was intended to precede a series of other politically motivated killings in the United States and Canada.
Yadav remains at large, but by charging him and releasing his name, the Biden administration sought to confront the Indian government over criminal activities that have emerged as a major point of tension between India and the West over the past year – culminating this week in a diplomatic flare-up with Canada and the expulsion of diplomats.
“The FBI will not tolerate acts of violence or other attempts to retaliate against those living in the United States for exercising their constitutionally protected rights,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
The criminal case against Yadav was announced the same week when two members of an Indian investigative committee investigating the plot were in Washington to meet with US officials about the investigation.
“They have informed us that the individual named in the Justice Department indictment is no longer an employee of the Indian government,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters before the case against Yadav was unveiled . “We are satisfied with the collaboration. It remains an ongoing process.
On Monday, Canada said it had identified India’s top diplomat in the country as a person of interest in the killing of a Sikh activist there and deported him and five other diplomats.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and police officials went public this week with allegations that Indian diplomats targeted Sikh separatists in Canada by sharing information about them with their government back home.
They said top Indian officials then passed that information on to Indian organized crime groups that targeted the activists, who are Canadian citizens, with drive-by shootings, extortions and even murder.
For its part, India has dismissed the allegations as absurd, and the Foreign Ministry said it is expelling Canada’s acting High Commissioner and five other diplomats in response.
The murder plot was first revealed by federal prosecutors last year when they announced charges against a man, Nikhil Gupta, who was recruited by a then-unknown Indian government official to orchestrate the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in New York.
Gupta was extradited from the Czech Republic to the United States in June following his arrest in Prague last year.
The rewritten indictment stated that Yadav recruited Gupta to arrange the murder in May 2023.
It said that Gupta, an Indian national living in India, contacted an individual at Yadav’s direction, believing the individual to be a criminal associate.
Instead, the indictment said, the individual was a confidential source working with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The indictment stated that Gupta asked the person to help contract a hitman to carry out the murder, promising to pay $100,000.
Of the $100,000 owed for the attack, $15,000 was delivered by a Yadav associate to the DEA’s undercover source in Manhattan, according to arrangements made by Yadav and Gupta, the indictment said.
Authorities said Yadav, a citizen and resident of India, directed the plot from India while employed by the government’s Cabinet Secretariat of India, which houses India’s foreign intelligence service. Yadav has described his position as a ‘Senior Field Officer’ with responsibilities in ‘Security Management’ and ‘Intelligence’, the Ministry of Justice said.
When the assassination plot was created in June 2023, Yadav gave Gupta personal information about the Sikh separatist leader, including his home address in New York City, his phone numbers and details of his daily movements, which Gupta then passed on to the undercover DEA agent, according to court documents.
Yadav instructed Gupta to keep him regularly informed of the progress of the assassination plot, which led to Gupta sending him surveillance photos of the intended victim, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who advocated the creation of a sovereign Sikh state, the report said. indictment.
US authorities have said Pannun’s murder may have occurred just days later Hardeep Singh Nijjara Sikh activist exiled from India was shot dead outside a cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia on June 18, 2023.
Prosecutors say the goal was to kill at least four people in Canada and the U.S. by June 29, 2023, and more after that.
In a statement, Pannun said the indictment means the U.S. government has “reassured its commitment to the fundamental constitutional duty to protect the life, liberty, and freedom of expression of American citizens at home and abroad.”
He added: “The attempt on my life on American soil is the blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism which has become a challenge to American sovereignty and a threat to freedom of expression and democracy, unequivocally proving that India believes in the use of bullets while pro Khalistan Sikhs believe in ballot papers.”
