The US Justice Department has charged a former Indian employee Vikas Yadav of murder-for-hire and money laundering, for plotting to assassinate a US citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York.
Yadav, an ex-RAW official who remains at large, has been charged in a second superseding indictment unsealed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. His alleged co-conspirator Nikhil Gupta, 53, was earlier charged and extradited to the United States.
They conspired to kill Pannun, a vocal critic of the Indian government, who leads a US-based organization that advocates for the establishment of a Sikh sovereign state called Khalistan. It should be noted that the Indian government has banned the victim and his separatist organization from India.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the Justice Department will hold any person, regardless of their power or proximity to power, who seeks to harm and silence American citizens. He highlighted that American law enforcement foiled an attempt by Vikas Yadv and Nikhil Gupta to assassinate an American citizen on US soil.
Garland said the charges demonstrate that the Justice Department will not tolerate attempts to target and endanger Americans and to undermine the rights to which every US citizen is entitled.
FBI onto Indian Government Employee in US
The Federal Bureau of Investigations has also been involved in the case. Christopher Wray, FBI Director, said the defendant who is an Indian government employee, allegedly conspired with a criminal associate. He said the accused attempted to assassinate a US citizen on American soil for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Wray highlighted that the FBI will not tolerate acts of violence and other efforts to retaliate against those residing in the US for exercising their constitutionally protected rights. The FBI is working with its partners to detect, disrupt, and hold accountable foreign nationals and others who engage in acts of transnational repression.
Also Read: Nihon Hidankyo, Victor Ambros and Han Kang, Who Won What: Nobel Prize 2024
US Against Transnational Repression
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division asserted that the 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.
He warned governments considering such criminal activities that the DOJ is committed to disrupting and exposing these plots and holding wrongful actors accountable irrespective of who they are and where they reside.
This indictment comes amid allegations by the Canadian government of an Indian agent’s involvement in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia, Canada on June 18, 2023, just two days before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States.
