The U.S. Justice Department announced criminal charges against an Indian government employee Thursday in connection with a foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.
Vikash Yadav remains at large but faces murder-for-hire charges in federal court.
The criminal case was announced the same week as two members of an Indian inquiry committee investigating the plot were in Washington to meet with U.S. officials about the investigation.
“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 said in a statement announcing the charges.
The charges come days after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and police officials went public with allegations that Indian diplomats were targeting Sikh separatists in Canada by sharing information about them with their government back home. They said top Indian officials were then passing that information along to Indian organized crime groups who were targeting the activists, who are Canadian citizens, with drive-by shootings, extortions and even murder.
The two sides ordered the expulsion of top diplomats this week in the deepening crisis over the accusations, including Canada’s allegation that the diplomats were linked to the June 2023 killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
The New York murder-for-hire plot was first disclosed by federal prosecutors last year when they announced charges against a man, Nikhil Gupta, who was recruited by a then-unidentified Indian government employee to orchestrate the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in New York.
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Gupta was extradited to the United States in June from the Czech Republic after his arrest in Prague last year.
In a statement, the intended victim, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, said the indictment means the U.S. government has “reassured its commitment to fundamental constitutional duty to protect the life, liberty and freedom of expression of the U.S. Citizen 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 America’s sovereignty and threat to freedom of speech and democracy, which unequivocally proves that India believes in using bullets while pro Khalistan Sikhs believe in ballots.”
India’s government on Thursday denied it was working with mobsters to target Sikh separatists in Canada as alleged by Ottawa, and even suggested that Canadian authorities had been resisting India’s attempts to extradite those people to India.
The Nijjar killing in Canada has soured India-Canada ties for more than a year, and despite Canada’s assertion that it has forwarded evidence of its allegations to Indian authorities, the Indian government continues to deny it has seen any.
Jaiswal said again on Thursday that Canada has provided no evidence of its allegations surrounding attacks on Sikh activists, contradicting Trudeau’s statements this week that his country’s investigators have privately shared information with Indian counterparts and found them to be uncooperative.
Four Indian nationals living in Canada were charged with Nijjar’s murder and are awaiting trial.
The accusations have also tested Washington’s relations with India, often viewed by the West as a counterbalance to China.
India has labeled Sikh separatists as “terrorists” and threats to its security. Sikh separatists demand an independent homeland known as Khalistan to be carved out of India. An insurgency in India during the 1980s and 1990s killed tens of thousands.
—With additional files from Reuters
© 2024 The Canadian Press
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