Indian government employee charged with foiled murder-for-hire in New York

The Justice Department announced criminal charges Thursday against an Indian government employee who specialized in intelligence related to a foiled plot to assassinate a New York-based Sikh separatist leader.

Vikash Yadav, 39, is charged with murder-for-hire over a planned killing that prosecutors first disclosed last year and was said to precede a series of other politically motivated killings in the United States and Canada.

Yadav remains at large, but in charging him and releasing his name, the Biden administration sought to denounce the Indian government for criminal activity that has become a significant point of tension between India and the West over the last year – and this week culminating in a diplomatic flare-up with Canada and the expulsion of diplomats.

“The FBI will not tolerate acts of violence or other retaliation against U.S. residents for exercising their constitutionally protected rights,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

The criminal case against Yadav was announced the same week that two members of an Indian fact-finding committee investigating the conspiracy were in Washington to meet with U.S. 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 continues to be an ongoing process.

On Monday, Canada said it had identified the top Indian diplomat in the country as a person involved in the killing of a Sikh activist there and expelled 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 passing information about them to their government back home.

They said senior Indian officials then passed that information on to Indian organized crime groups, who targeted the activists, who are Canadian citizens, with drive-by shootings, extortion and even murder.

India, for its part, has rejected the allegations as absurd and its foreign ministry said it would expel the acting Canadian high commissioner and five other diplomats in response.

The murder-for-hire plot was first uncovered by federal prosecutors last year when they filed charges against a man named Nikhil Gupta, who was recruited by a then-unidentified Indian government employee to orchestrate the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in New York.

Gupta was extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic in June after being arrested in Prague last year.

The rewritten indictment said Yadav recruited Gupta in May 2023 to arrange the assassination.

It was said that Gupta, an Indian national living in India, contacted a person on Yadav’s instructions as he believed the person was a criminal accomplice.

Instead, the indictment said the person was a confidential source working with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The indictment said Gupta asked the person to help hire a hitman to carry out the murder and promised 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 Yadav and Gupta’s agreements, the indictment says.

Authorities said Yadav, a citizen and resident of India, masterminded the conspiracy from India while he was employed at the Indian government’s Cabinet Secretariat, which houses India’s foreign intelligence agency. Yadav described his position as a “senior field officer” with responsibilities in “security management” and “intelligence,” the Justice Department said.

When the assassination was being planned 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 updated on the progress of the assassination plot and arranged for Gupta to send him surveillance photos of the intended victim, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who advocated for the creation of a sovereign Sikh state, it said the indictment.

According to US authorities, Pannun’s killing would have come just days after the June 18, 2023 shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist exiled from India, outside a cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia.

According to prosecutors, the goal was to kill at least four people in Canada and the United States by June 29, 2023, and more after that.

In a statement, Pannun said the charges meant the U.S. government had “reaffirmed its commitment to the fundamental constitutional duty of protecting the lives, liberty and free expression of U.S. citizens at home and abroad.”

He added: “The attempt on my life on American soil is a blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism, which has become a challenge to America’s sovereignty and a threat to freedom of expression and democracy, which unequivocally proves that India is committed to the Use of bullets believes while pro-Khalistan Sikhs believe in ballot papers.”