Indian official directed plot to kill Sikh separatist in New York, US justice department claims
An Indian government official directed an unsuccessful plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist in New York City, US justice chiefs have claimed.
They allege the Indian government employee, who worked in security and intelligence, recruited another Indian national named as Nikhil Gupta to plan the assassination of a US citizen who had advocated for a Sikh sovereign state in northern India.
It comes after the Canadian government sparked a diplomatic row by claiming India may have been involved in the June killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia.
On Wednesday, US Department of Justice (DoJ) officials announced charges against Gupta, 52, who they claim worked with the Indian government employee on the alleged plot to kill the US citizen.
The Indian government official is named only as CC-1 but has described himself as a “senior field officer” with responsibilities in “security management” and “intelligence” and also claims to have served in India’s Central Reserve Police Force and been trained in “battle craft” and “weapons,” an indictment against Gupta said.
Prosecutors allege the Indian official recruited Gupta in May 2023 to orchestrate the assassination, and he then reached out to someone he believed was a criminal associate for help hiring a hitman.
However, prosecutors said the associate was actually an undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
According to the indictment, released on Wednesday, Gupta agreed to a $100,000 (£79,000) fee for the killing and paid $15,000 (£12,000) upfront via an associate.
The target of the assassination was not named in the court documents, but the Associated Press identified him as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun – a US-based Sikh separatist whom the Indian government considers a terrorist.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. File pic by AP
The indictment said that, in June, the Indian government employee gave Gupta the home address of Pannun, his phone numbers and details about his daily conduct, including surveillance photographs, which Gupta then passed on to the undercover DEA agent.
It added that Gupta told the undercover agent to carry out the murder as quickly as possible, but also warned the agent not to act during meetings between US and Indian officials.
US Attorney Damian Williams said: “The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a US citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs, an ethnoreligious minority group in India.”
Gupta, who faces two counts of murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire conspiracy, was arrested by Czech authorities in June and is awaiting extradition.
The news agency Reuters says he could not be reached for comment.
The charges come after an official of President Joe Biden’s administration last week said authorities had thwarted a plot to kill Pannun.
The official also issued a warning to India over concerns the government in New Delhi may have had knowledge of the plot.
On Wednesday, India’s foreign ministry said New Delhi would formally investigate the concerns aired by the US.
“India takes such inputs seriously since they impinge on our national security interests as well,” the ministry said, vowing to “take necessary follow-up action” on the findings.
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The Indian government has complained about the presence of Sikh separatist groups outside India, including in Canada and the US.
The groups have kept alive the movement for Khalistan – the demand for an independent Sikh state to be carved out of India.
The movement is considered a security threat by India – who have blamed Sikh militants for the 1985 bombing of an Air India Boeing 747 flying from Canada to India when all 329 people on board were killed.
In October, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said there were “credible allegations” that India was involved in the killing of Nijjar.
Ealier this year, Canada claimed India may have been involved in the killing of Sikh activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar (pictured). Pic: Sikh PA
The Indian government accused Nijjar in 2020 of being a leader of a Sikh independence militant group, reported Reuters, which also said New Delhi claims he was associated with a “terrorist organisation”.
Nijjar, a 45-year-old Canadian citizen, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, on 18 June.
Claims it was involved in Nijjar’s death were dismissed as “absurd” by India, which threatened to revoke the diplomatic immunity of Canadian diplomats following Mr Trudeau’s comments.
Canada responded by withdrawing 41 of its 62 diplomats from India. It also expelled an Indian diplomat from Ottawa over the affair.
Mr Trudeau has responded to the latest allegations against Gupta by saying that the US investigation underscores the need for India to take similar allegations by Canada seriously.
The White House – which has placed a high priority on improving ties with India to counter China – declined to comment directly on the charges against Gupta, but said administration officials acted quickly.
White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement: “When we were made aware of the fact that the defendant in this case had credibly indicated that he was directed to arrange the murder by an individual who is assessed to be an employee of the Indian government, we took this information very seriously and engaged in direct conversations with the Indian government at the highest levels to express our concern.”
The Donald Trump peace plan is nothing of the sort. It takes Russian demands and presents them as peace proposals, in what is effectively for Ukraine a surrender ultimatum.
If accepted, it would reward armed aggression. The principle, sacrosanct since the Second World War, for obvious and very good reasons, that even de facto borders cannot be changed by force, will have been trampled on at the behest of the leader of the free world.
The Kremlin will have imposed terms via negotiators on a country it has violated, and whose people its troops have butchered, massacred and raped. It is without doubt the biggest crisis in Trans-Atlantic relations since the war began, if not since the inception of NATO.
The question now is: are Europe’s leaders up to meeting the daunting challenges that will follow. On past form, we cannot be sure.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. Pic: Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov via Reuters
The plan proposes the following:
• Land seized by Vladimir Putin’s unwarranted and unprovoked invasion would be ceded by Kyiv.
• Territory his forces have fought but failed to take with colossal loss of life will be thrown into the bargain for good measure.
• Ukraine will be barred from NATO, from having long-range weapons, from hosting foreign troops, from allowing foreign diplomatic planes to land, and its military neutered, reduced in size by more than half.
Donald Trump meeting Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August, File pic: Reuters
And most worryingly for Western leaders, the plan proposes NATO and Russia negotiate with America acting as mediator.
Lest we forget, America is meant to be the strongest partner in NATO, not an outside arbitrator. In one clause, Mr Trump’s lack of commitment to the Western alliance is laid bare in chilling clarity.
And even for all that, the plan will not bring peace. Mr Putin has made it abundantly clear he wants all of Ukraine.
He has a proven track record of retiring, rallying his forces, then returning for more. Reward a bully as they say, and he will only come back for more. Why wouldn’t he, if he is handed the fortress cities of Donetsk and a clear run over open tank country to Kyiv in a few years?
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US draft Russia peace plan
Since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, Europe has tried to keep the maverick president onside when his true sympathies have repeatedly reverted to Moscow.
It has been a demeaning and sycophantic spectacle, NATO’s secretary general stooping even to calling the US president ‘Daddy’. And it hasn’t worked. It may have made matters worse.
A choir sing in front of an apartment building destroyed in a Russian missile strike in Ternopil, Ukraine. Pic: Reuters
The parade of world leaders trooping through Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, lavishing praise on his Gaza ceasefire plan, only encouraged him to believe he is capable of solving the world’s most complex conflicts with the minimum of effort.
The Gaza plan is mired in deepening difficulty, and it never came near addressing the underlying causes of the war.
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Most importantly, principles the West has held inviolable for eight decades cannot be torn up for the sake of a quick and uncertain peace.
With a partner as unreliable, the challenge to Europe cannot be clearer.
In the words of one former Baltic foreign minister: “There is a glaringly obvious message for Europe in the 28-point plan: This is the end of the end.
“We have been told repeatedly and unambiguously that Ukraine’s security, and therefore Europe’s security, will be Europe’s responsibility. And now it is. Entirely.”
If Europe does not step up to the plate and guarantee Ukraine’s security in the face of this American betrayal, we could all pay the consequences.
World
Ukraine and Europe cannot reject Trump’s plan – they will play for time and hope he can still be persuaded to desert the Kremlin
“Terrible”, “weird”, “peculiar” and “baffling” – some of the adjectives being levelled by observers at the Donald Trump administration’s peace plan for Ukraine.
The 28-point proposal was cooked up between Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff and Kremlin official Kirill Dmitriev without European and Ukrainian involvement.
It effectively dresses up Russian demands as a peace proposal. Demands first made by Russia at the high watermark of its invasion in 2022, before defeats forced it to retreat from much of Ukraine.
Ukraine war latest: Kyiv receives US peace plan
(l-r) Kirill Dmitriev and special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg in April 2025. Pic: Kremlin Pool Photo/AP
Its proposals are non-starters for Ukrainians.
It would hand over the rest of Donbas, territory they have spent almost four years and lost tens of thousands of men defending.
Analysts estimate at the current rate of advance, it would take Russia four more years to take the land it is proposing simply to give them instead.
It proposes more than halving the size of the Ukrainian military and depriving them of some of their most effective long-range weapons.
And it would bar any foreign forces acting as peacekeepers in Ukraine after any peace deal is done.
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Is Moscow back in Washington’s good books?
The plan comes at an excruciating time for the Ukrainians.
They are being pounded with devastating drone attacks, killing dozens in the last few nights alone.
They are on the verge of losing a key stronghold city, Pokrovsk.
And Volodymyr Zelenskyy is embroiled in the gravest political crisis since the war began, with key officials facing damaging corruption allegations.
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Ukrainian support for peace plan ‘very much in doubt’
The suspicion is Mr Witkoff and Mr Dmitriev conspired together to choose this moment to put even more pressure on the Ukrainian president.
Perversely, though, it may help him.
There has been universal condemnation and outrage in Kyiv at the Witkoff-Dmitriev plan. Rivals have little choice but to rally around the wartime Ukrainian leader as he faces such unreasonable demands.
The genesis of this plan is unclear.
Was it born from Donald Trump’s overinflated belief in his peacemaking abilities? His overrated Gaza ceasefire plan attracted lavish praise from world leaders, but now seems mired in deepening difficulty.
The fear is Mr Trump’s team are finding ways to allow him to walk away from this conflict altogether, blaming Ukrainian intransigence for the failure of his diplomacy.
Mr Trump has already ended financial support for Ukraine, acting as an arms dealer instead, selling weapons to Europe to pass on to the invaded democracy.
If he were to take away military intelligence support too, Ukraine would be blind to the kind of attacks that in recent days have killed scores of civilians.
Europe and Ukraine cannot reject the plan entirely and risk alienating Mr Trump.
They will play for time and hope against all the evidence he can still be persuaded to desert the Kremlin and put pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war, rather than force Ukraine to surrender instead.
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