Indian man extradited to US for alleged plot to kill Sikh separatist
Nikhil Gupta is accused of paying a hitman to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun
By Arun Kumar
An Indian national accused of paying a hit man to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a leader of the separatist Khalistan movement, has been extradited to the United States.
Nikhil Gupta is due to be produced Monday in Manhattan federal court to face charges he directed a plot to kill Pannun of Sikhs for Justice, a critic of the Indian government in New York City, ABC News reported.
Gupta, 52, was arrested in the Czech Republic late last year. He faces charges of murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire conspiracy. The charges against him carry up to 20 years in prison. Prison records show he is currently being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, according to BBC.
“As alleged, the defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a US citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs, an ethnoreligious minority group in India,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in November at the time of Gupta’s arrest.
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“We will not tolerate efforts to assassinate US citizens on US soil, and stand ready to investigate, thwart, and prosecute anyone who seeks to harm and silence Americans here or abroad.”
A task force led by the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered the alleged plot to kill Pannun after a different Sikh separatist was killed in Canada, ABC News reported citing sources familiar with the case.
The killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar prompted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to accuse New Delhi in what became an international incident.
Nijjar was killed on June 18 near a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia. Three Canadians were arrested last month, according to Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for the murder of Nijjar: Karan Brar, 22, of Edmonton; Kamalpreet Singh, 22, of Edmonton; and Karanpreet Singh, 28, of Edmonton.
Gupta was directed by an unnamed “senior field officer” in the Indian government with intelligence experience “to orchestrate the assassination of the victim,” according to the indictment filed in November.
READ: Khalistan supporters attack Indian consulate in San Francisco (March 20, 2023)
The purported hitman Gupta hired was actually a confidential source working for US law enforcement, the indictment said. In May 2023, Gupta agreed to pay $100,000 for the hit job, with the US Attorney’s Office sharing photos of wads of cash being exchanged by Gupta as a down payment on the assassination.
Gupta had fought extradition, but the Czech Constitutional Court cleared the way for him to be brought to the US in a ruling late last month, according to the BBC.
Pannun was designated a terrorist by the Indian government in 2020, an allegation he denies.
In November, the White House said it had raised the alleged assassination plot against Pannun with India at the most senior level.
Indian officials distanced themselves from the alleged plot, saying such actions were against government policy. New Delhi said it had formed a committee to investigate the allegations against Gupta.
