LONDON: The Indian national and agent of the Indian spy agency RAW accused of trying to kill Sikh leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York has been extradited to the United States ahead of his expected appearance in federal court.
Nikhil Gupta has been charged with murder for hire linked to a foiled plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual US-Canadian citizen who advocates for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan.
Gupta, 52, is listed on the Prison Board's website as an inmate held at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal administrative detention facility, US media reported.
Gupta, who had been detained in the Czech Republic, arrived in New York over the weekend after the Czech government accepted the U.S. request. Typically, extradited defendants must appear in court within one day of arriving in the country.
The U.S. government said a top RAW Indian government intelligence employee ordered Pannun's assassination in May and hired Gupta to organize the assassination.
US authorities dismantled the plot last June before it could be carried out. Pannun works as general counsel for New York-based Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a group seeking to create an independent Sikh state called Khalistan in India.
Gupta's lawyer, Rohini Musa, wrote in a petition to India's Supreme Court that her client is being unfairly prosecuted and said “there is nothing on record linking the petitioner to the alleged mass plot to murder the alleged victim.” .
Musa complained that Gupta received adverse legal advice from a Czech government-appointed lawyer “under the undue influence of… US agencies” during the initial phase of his detention. He said India and the United States were “going back and forth to blame each other for their foreign policy.”
Prosecutors said that hours after the assassination of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada on June 18, 2023, the anonymous Indian government agent sent Gupta a “video clip showing Nijjar's bloodied body slumped in his vehicle.”
Hours later, according to the indictment, the Indian government agent sent Pannun's address to Gupta. The same person messaged Gupta two days later, telling him that Pannun's murder was a “priority now.”
RAW officers and Gupta did not know that they were contacting a US federal agent to kill Pannun.
In September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” that Indian government agents were behind Nijjar's murder.
The Justice Department alleges that Gupta, 52, is an associate of a “senior field official” in the Indian government and that together they and others helped plan Pannun's murder.
In November, Justice Department officials announced charges against Gupta after he was arrested in June in the Czech Republic. They said he would face extradition to New York.
Prosecutors said Gupta claimed to be a drug and weapons dealer who thought he was contacting a hitman, but it turned out he was talking to a DEA source. The source connected Gupta to an alleged hitman who was actually an undercover DEA officer, according to the indictment.
DEA and FBI officials have said that Gupta offered to pay $100,000 for the murder and provided surveillance photos of the alleged target in June 2023.
Around the same time in Canada, on June 18, gunmen shot and killed another Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia. Nijjar was a close ally of Pannun.
Investigators said that after the murder, Gupta boasted to the undercover officer that Nijjar “was the target too” and that “we have so many targets” and that he said he wanted the operation in New York to continue soon.
India's Foreign Ministry has called allegations that the Indian government was involved in planning assassinations in Canada or the United States “absurd.”
Nikhil Gupta will appear in court on Monday charged with murder for hire, a US District Court spokesperson told US media.
