State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.
| Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. has said it is looking forward to the results of the Indian inquiry into the allegations that an Indian official was involved in an alleged plot to assassinate Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil.

In November last year, U.S. federal prosecutors charged Indian national Nikhil Gupta of working with an Indian government employee in the foiled plot to kill Pannun in New York. Pannun, wanted in India on terror charges, holds dual citizenship of the U.S. and Canada.

Gupta, who was arrested in the Czech Republic in June last year, was extradited to the U.S. on June 14.

“They (Indian officials) have announced that they are conducting an inquiry, and we will look forward to the results of that inquiry,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters at his daily news conference on Wednesday.

He was responding to a question on members of the Foreign Senate Foreign Relations Committee writing a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for a strong diplomatic response on the Indian government’s involvement in an alleged assassination attempt on a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.

Following the allegations, India appointed a high-level inquiry committee to look into the inputs provided by the U.S. on the plot.

Mr. Miller said, “We will respond to those members privately as we always do. I won’t speak to that here. But as pertains to the other issue, when this issue first arose, we made clear that we had raised it with the government of India and told them that we expected there to be a full investigation.”

During a virtual media briefing on Wednesday on his and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s visit to India last week, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said, the U.S. has consistently pressed India for updates on the Indian investigation into the alleged foiled plot to kill Sikh separatist Pannun and made it clear that it seeks accountability in the case.

“We have had constructive dialogue with India on this topic and I would say that they have been responsive to our concerns,” he said.

“We’ve made clear that we seek accountability from the Government of India and we have consistently asked for updates on the Indian committee of inquiry’s investigations,” Campbell said.

“And I would just simply say that we raised this issue directly with the Indian government…at the most senior levels between our two sides,” he said.

He was replying to a question on whether the ‘murder-for-hire’ plot targeting Pannun was raised during meetings that he and Sullivan held with their Indian counterparts.

Responding to another question on the Lok Sabha elections in India, Miller said, “When it comes to the Indian elections, we have been quite clear on behalf of the United States government that we celebrate what was the largest exercise of democracy in the history of the world.” “It was an extraordinary achievement. And then when it comes to the outcome of the election, we obviously take no side. That’s a question for the people of India to decide,” Mr. Miller said.

Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is pictured in his office on November 29, 2023, in New York. U.S. authorities earlier said an Indian government official directed a plot to assassinate Pannun in New York City after he advocated for a sovereign state for Sikhs. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The United States is “regularly working” with India in its investigation into the allegations related to the plot to assassinate Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a U.S. State Department official has said. The remarks by U.S. State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel came after The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, named a Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) officer in connection with the alleged plot to kill Pannun on American soil last year.

India on Tuesday strongly rejected the claims, saying that the report made “unwarranted and unsubstantiated” imputations on a serious matter and that an investigation into the case was underway.

Addressing his daily news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Patel said, “We continue to expect accountability from the Government of India based on the results of the Indian inquiry committee’s work, and we are regularly working with them and enquiring for additional updates.”

“We’ll also continue to raise our concerns directly with the Indian Government at senior levels, but beyond that, I’m not going to parse into this further and will defer to the Department of Justice,” Mr. Patel said when asked about The Washington Post report, which identified the R&AW officer as Vikram Yadav and alleged that he was involved in the plot to assassinate Pannun.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal on Tuesday slammed the report by the U.S. daily.

“The report in question makes unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations on a serious matter,” he said in New Delhi. Mr. Jaiswal said a high-level inquiry committee set up by New Delhi to look into inputs provided by the US on the alleged plot was still probing the case.

“There is an ongoing investigation of the high-level committee set up by the Government of India to look into the security concerns shared by the U.S. government on networks of organised criminals, terrorists and others,” he said.

“Speculative and irresponsible comments on it are not helpful,” Mr. Jaiswal added.

In November last year, U.S. federal prosecutors charged Indian national Nikhil Gupta with working with an Indian government employee in the foiled plot to kill Pannun.

Pannun, wanted in India on terror charges, holds dual citizenship of the U.S. and Canada. He has been designated as a terrorist by the Union Home Ministry under the anti-terror law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The allegations about the failed plot to kill Pannun came to the fore weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed in September last year of a “potential” involvement of Indian agents in the killing of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18 in British Columbia.

India had strongly rejected the charges.

On December 7, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in Parliament that India instituted an inquiry committee to look into the inputs received from the U.S. in the Pannun case as the matter has a bearing on national security.

Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is pictured in his office on November 29, 2023, in New York. U.S. authorities earlier said an Indian government official directed a plot to assassinate Pannun in New York City after he advocated for a sovereign state for Sikhs. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. expects “accountability” and is raising concerns over the Pannun case with New Delhi regularly, said the State Department, responding for the first time to the latest details reported by TheWashington Post this week. Both the White House and the State department have responded to the report, that named an Indian intelligence official for allegedly ordering the assassination of a Khalistani activist in New York in June 2023, and also claimed that U.S. authorities believe that the R&AW chief and National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval were aware of the plot.

“We continue to expect accountability from the Government of India based on the results of the Indian inquiry committee’s work, and we are regularly working with them and enquiring for additional updates,” said Principal Deputy Spokesperson for the State Department, Vedant Patel, in response to a question about the Post’s article, where he didn’t deny its content. “We’ll also continue to raise our concerns directly with the Indian Government at senior levels,” he added, deferring to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has been investigating the alleged plot and filed an indictment in the case in November 2023, based on evidence including phone transcripts, photographs and the use of an undercover officer and an informant. The indictment against an Indian businessman Nikhil Gupta is expected to go to trial this summer, and is awaiting the extradition of Mr. Gupta, who denies the charges, who is in custody in the Czech Republic.

“This is a serious matter, and we’re taking that very, very seriously,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, also taking note of The Washington Post report, adding that the U.S. was going to continue to raise its concerns.

‘Speculative comments’

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has also not explicitly denied the Post article, that was published on Monday, but said that it made “unwarranted and unsubstantiated imputations on a serious matter” and that “speculative and irresponsible comments” were not “helpful”.

“There is an ongoing investigation of the high-level committee set up by the Government of India to look into the security concerns shared by the U.S. government on networks of organised criminals, terrorists and others,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said. The government has not so far disclosed the composition of the committee, and has not confirmed media reports that it had presented its report holding a “rogue agent” responsible for the plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the Khalistani activist wanted on terror charges in India under the UAPA. India continues to maintain that it is not “government policy” to conduct such transnational killings, but that it has raised strongly with the U.S., Canada and other countries its concerns over Khalistani separatist groups that target Indian diplomats and consulates in different parts of the world.

The allegations about the aborted attempt plot to kill Pannun as well as further allegations that India’s intelligence agents also ordered the killing of Canada-based Sikh activist wanted in India, outside Toronto, were first made by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressing the Canadian Parliament in September last year. India has more categorically denied those charges, that have led to a sharp downturn in India-Canada ties, and the government says that the Canadian government has not shared any evidence in the matter with it.

The report says the plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun had sanctions from senior intelligence figures.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. authorities believe the alleged plot to kill Khalistani activist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is wanted on terror charges in India, was ordered by the previous chief of the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), and had official sanction from senior intelligence officials with “with ties to [Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inner circle”, the Washington Post a U.S.-national daily reported.

Escalating campaign

The report in the Washington Post newspaper identified, for the first time, an R&AW officer whose name had been withheld in the case papers made available by the Justice Department in New York in November 2023. In a separate press release, the Post said, on the basis of interviews with “more than three dozen current and former senior officials in the United States, India, Canada, Britain, Germany and Australia”, that other R&AW officers have faced “arrest, expulsion and reprimand” in recent months, indicating that there was more international coordination about what it called “escalating campaign of aggression” against Indian diaspora members by India’s intelligence operatives.

The Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment on the latest story in the Washington Post report on Monday. Last week, in response to a question on the allegations, the MEA spokesperson said that a “high-level committee is looking into information that was shared by the American side with us, because [it] also equally impacts our national security. In recent weeks, the government has also blocked the broadcast of documentaries by Canadian and Australian public broadcasters CBC and ABC that focussed on the allegations against Indian agencies for targeting Khalistani activists abroad.

“In reports that have been closely held within the American government, U.S. intelligence officials have assessed that the operation targeting Pannun was approved by the RAW chief at the time, Samant Goel,” said the report. “U.S. spy agencies have more tentatively assessed that Mr. Modi’s National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, was probably aware of RAW’s plans to kill Sikh activists,” it added.

‘Not our policy’

According to the story, the R&AW official identified as Vikram Yadav had directed Indian businessman Nikhil Gupta, now in custody in the Czech Republic pending extradition to the U.S. to stand trial in the case, to hire a hitman to kill GS Pannun outside his New York residence. Mr. Yadav, believed to be a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) official on deputation to the R&AW, has subsequently been repatriated to the paramilitary forces, other U.S. media have reported.

While the MEA Ministry of External Affairs has maintained that such killings are not Indian policy, and has denied Canadian allegations of a similar hit on Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, the government has agreed to an enquiry on the U.S. allegations.

The Washington Post story also dwells at length on differences between the U.S. White House administration and the Justice Department that oversaw the FBI-DEA investigation in the case.

The evidence cited had included an undercover American agent who was hired for the Pannun killing by Mr. Gupta, under direct orders from Mr. Yadav, surveillance of messages purportedly exchanged between them, as well as a photograph allegedly showing three Indian intelligence officials who gave the green signal for the plot during a video-call.

However, the report stated while the Justice Department pushed for an indictment against both Mr. Gupta and Mr. Yadav, Biden administration officials prevailed in ensuring the indictment is against only Mr. Gupta at present, ostensibly so as not to “rupture” ties with India.

The matter was thrashed out a series of meetings which included U.S. Deputy NSA Jon Finer, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and Deputy CIA Director David Cohen, the report said. It also stated Mr. President Biden had discussed the issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their meeting in September 2023, calling for accountability for the case.

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