According to a U.S. District Court spokeswoman, Indian national Nikhil Gupta, who was accused in a plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist, has been extradited to the U.S.
An extradited Indian national has been charged with aiding and abetting the murder of a U.S. citizen in New York City.
Nikhil Gupta is expected to appear in court on federal murder-for-hire allegations on Monday in the lower Manhattan courthouse, according to a U.S. District Court spokeswoman.
According to the Justice Department, Gupta, 52, is a friend of a “senior field officer” in the Indian government, and the two of them collaborated on the plan to kill a Sikh separatist and opponent of the Indian government in New York City.
According to The Associated Press, the critic has been identified as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, whom Indian authorities have designated as a terrorist.
According to officials, Pannun, who is thought to be the intended target of the alleged conspiracy, supports an autonomous Punjab province for the Sikh community of India.
Charges against Gupta were announced by Justice Department authorities in November, following his detention in the Czech Republic in June. They threatened to extradite him to New York.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “As alleged, the defendant conspired from India with an Indian government employee in an unsuccessful assassination plot to assassinate, right here in New York City, a U.S. citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs, an ethnoreligious minority group in India. Today’s extradition makes clear our unwavering resolve to investigate, thwart, and prosecute those who seek to harm and silence U.S. citizens here and elsewhere. We thank our Czech government counterparts for their close cooperation in this extradition.”
Gupta has claimed to be a drug and weapons trafficker who thought he was conversing with a hitman, but the prosecution alleged that he was speaking with a Drug Enforcement Administration source. According to an indictment, the source put Gupta in contact with a supposed hitman who was an undercover DEA agent.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland: “This extradition makes clear that the Justice Department will not tolerate attempts to silence or harm American citizens. Nikhil Gupta will now face justice in an American courtroom for his involvement in an alleged plot, directed by an employee of the Indian government, to target and assassinate a U.S. citizen for his support of the Sikh separatist movement in India. I am grateful to the Department’s agents who foiled this assassination plot and to our Czech partners for their assistance in this arrest and extradition.”
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said: “This murder-for-hire plot — allegedly orchestrated by an Indian government employee to kill a U.S. citizen in New York City — was a brazen attempt to silence a political activist for exercising a quintessential American right: his freedom of speech. The extradition of the defendant is a vital step toward justice, and I am grateful to our Czech partners for their assistance in this matter. We will continue working relentlessly to identify, disrupt, and hold accountable those who seek to harm American citizens here or abroad.”
According to DEA and FBI agents, in June 2023, Gupta offered to pay $100,000 for the assassination and gave surveillance images of the purported target.
At about the same moment, on June 18, outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia, assailants shot and killed Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Sikh separatist leader.
According to investigators, Gupta boasted to the undercover agent that Nijjar “was also the target” and that “we have so many targets” following the killing. He also expressed his desire for the New York operation to start as soon as possible.
Claims that the Indian government was complicit in plotting killings in the US or Canada have been deemed “absurd” by the country’s foreign ministry.
A spokesman for the DEA and FBI declined to comment on the extradition. The U.S. attorney’s spokeswoman also refrained from commenting.
Gupta faced accusations of murder-for-hire and conspiracy to conduct murder-for-hire, each of which has a maximum 10-year prison sentence if proven true.
Last year, GreatGameIndia reported that according to the Justice Department, India hired DEA agents to assassinate terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on U.S. soil.
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