Former Indian spy charged in plot to assassinate US citizen in New York | EUROtoday

The US has criminally charged a former Indian intelligence officer accused of directing a foiled assassination plot towards a Sikh separatist chief in New York City final yr, escalating efforts to carry the Indian authorities accountable for an alleged act of violence on US soil.

Vikash Yadav — a former officer in India’s overseas intelligence service who was named by named by federal prosecutors for the primary time in Thursday’s superseding indictment — is charged with cash laundering, conspiracy and main a murder-for-hire scheme.

His alleged co-conspirator, Nikhil Gupta, was beforehand charged and extradited to the US. He stays in a Brooklyn jail and has pleaded not responsible. Yadav — described by legislation enforcement officers because the “mastermind” of the scheme — stays at massive.

“The Justice Department will be relentless in holding accountable any person — regardless of their position or proximity to power — who seeks to harm and silence American citizens,” Attorney General Merrick Garland stated in an announcement on Thursday.

Yadav and Gupta are accused of plotting the assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US and Canadian citizen who based Sikhs for Justice, which advocates for the creation of the unbiased Sikh state of Khalistan. The group is banned in India, the place he’s additionally thought-about a “terrorist.”

In May 2023, Yadav allegedly recruited Gupta to orchestrate the killing, and at Yadav’s path, he contacted an affiliate revealed to be a confidential supply for the Drug Enforcement Administration, in response to the indictment.

Gupta was launched to a purported “hitman” who was in truth an undercover officer.

Yadav supplied Gupta with Pannun’s tackle, cellphone quantity and different private data, and Gupta urged the “hitman” to hold out the killing as quickly as attainable however keep away from timing the killing throughout high-level conferences between US and Indian officers, in response to prosecutors.

Days earlier than Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state go to to the US, masked gunmen killed Hardeep Singh Nijjar exterior a Sikh temple in British Columbia, Canada. The following day, Gupta allegedly advised the hitman that Nijjar “was also the target” and “we have so many targets.”

He stated there was “no need to wait” to kill Pannun, in response to the indictment. “It’s a priority now,” he wrote on June 20.

The newest indictment is a “grave example of the increase in lethal plotting and other forms of violent transnational repression targeting diaspora communities in the United States,” in response to an announcement from Assistant Attorney General Matthew G Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

The Justice Department’s most-direct public confrontation with New Delhi over the foiled assassination try comes on the heels of Canada publicly alleging India’s broader marketing campaign of violence towards Indian dissidents, together with allegations that the killing of a Sikh separatist was directed by authorities officers.

There haven’t been any publicly recognized direct hyperlinks between the risk towards Pannum and the homicide in Canada, although parallels within the circumstances have drawn issues from officers that India has launched a wider world effort to quash dissent.

Yadav “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,” in response to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.