Who is Vikash Yadav, Indian agent accused by the United States of Sikh assassination plot? | Court News

The United States government on Thursday unsealed an indictment against Vikash Yadav, a former Indian intelligence officer, accusing him of leading a failed plot to assassinate Indian-American Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on the ground American in 2023.

The revelation of the charges was accompanied by a series of harsh comments from top U.S. law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, saying Washington would not tolerate a foreign national targets U.S. citizens.

The affair has muddied the waters for India and the United States, close partners who both see China as a main rival, and comes at a time when New Delhi is also embroiled in tensions with Canada over similar allegations.

Here's what we know about Yadav, what he's accused of, where India stands, and why it all matters.

Who is Vikash Yadav?

Yadav, an Indian resident and citizen, ordered an Indian man, Nikhil Gupta, around May 2023, to orchestrate Pannun's murder, the United States alleges.

According to the charge sheet unsealed Thursday, Yadav, 39, is also known as Vikas and goes by Amanat.

The indictment alleges that Yadav was employed by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's foreign intelligence agency. He described Yadav as a senior field officer working in security management and intelligence.

The US document also states that Yadav worked for India's largest paramilitary force, the Central Reserve Police Force, as deputy command.

Yadav provided his co-conspirator Gupta with details of Pannun's New York home address, telephone number and daily conduct, the document claims.

Yadav remains at large, a U.S. Department of Justice press release said. He was not captured and is believed to be in India. It is unclear whether the United States has ever requested his extradition from India.

https://x.com/FBI/status/1847035228918894597

How did the Indian government react?

On Thursday, Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a news conference that the individual named in the Justice Department's indictment was no longer an employee of the Indian government .

In essence, however, Jaiswal confirmed that Yadav had indeed been an employee of the Indian government.

India has previously said it was conducting its own internal investigation into allegations that its agents attempted to assassinate Pannun. He distanced himself from the plot, saying he did not carry out extraterritorial assassinations, suggesting that even if Indian nationals were involved in a plan to kill Pannun, they were not authorized by the highest levels of the government.

What happened to Gurpatwant Singh Pannun?

In November 2023, the United States foiled a plot to kill Pannun. On November 29, 2023, the United States revealed in an earlier indictment that Indian resident Gupta, 53, was an associate of an employee of an Indian government agency identified only as CC-1.

With the new indictment, CC-1 is now revealed to be Yadav. It alleged that Yadav directed the assassination plan from India and recruited Gupta in May 2023 for the position.

Gupta was ordered to hire a hitman to assassinate Pannun. Gupta ended up hiring a man who, unbeknownst to him, was an undercover law enforcement agent working for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Gupta agreed to pay the hitman $100,000, giving him a $15,000 cash advance in Manhattan around June 9, 2023. This was a deal accepted by Yadav, the new indictment adds .

On June 18, 2023, masked gunmen assassinated Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia, Canada. Thursday's indictment describes Nijjar as an associate of Pannun. He further adds that Yadav sent Gupta a video of Nijjar's bloodied body.

The new indictment says Gupta told the undercover DEA officer that Nijjar was also the target and we have so many targets.

Yadav, according to the United States, asked Gupta that Pannun's killing should not take place on the same day as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to the United States on June 20, 2023, or on days that precede it.

Gupta was arrested by Czech authorities on June 30, 2023.

In June 2024, Gupta was extradited to the United States, where he pleaded not guilty, in a New York court, to his involvement in the murder-for-hire plot.

How did Pannun react to this?

Pannun posted a statement on his 'stranger.

In his statement, Pannun claimed that Yadav was a mid-ranking soldier who had been instructed by Ajit Doval, India's national security adviser, and RAW chief Samant Goel to assassinate him in the part of the Modi regime's policy to violently suppress the Khalistan referendum campaign. Secession of Punjab from India by democratic means.

The Khalistan movement aims to create a separate Sikh state comprising Indian-controlled Punjab and other Punjabi-speaking areas of northern India. Khalistan is the proposed name for the state.

At the time of his death, Nijjar was also holding an unofficial referendum for Khalistan.

In his latest statement, Pannun said assassination attempts would not deter him from organizing for Khalistan. He added that he would hold a referendum for Khalistan among the Sikh diaspora in Auckland, New Zealand on November 17.

On September 18, Pannun filed a lawsuit against the Indian government as well as National Security Advisor Doval, RAW chief Goel, Yadav and Gupta. They were all summoned to appear in a U.S. court in the Southern District of New York. India's foreign ministry has rejected the allegations against Doval and Goel.

While Indian Prime Minister Modi and other Indian officials visited New York for the United Nations General Assembly between September 20 and 27, Doval abandoned the visit and remained in India.

Why is this important now?

The new US indictment comes as India and Canada are at odds over Nijjar's killing.

On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had revealed clear and convincing evidence that Indian government agents planned Nijjar's assassination. Trudeau and the RCMP later accused the Indian government of hiring hitmen from a notorious Indian gang, led by an imprisoned gangster known as Lawrence Bishnoi, to kill Sikh dissidents in the Canadian diaspora.

Ottawa expelled Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma on Monday, alongside five other Indian diplomats. In response, New Delhi ordered the expulsion of six Canadian diplomats, including the acting high commissioner, and gave them until Saturday to leave the country.

Why is India reacting differently to American and Canadian accusations?

Unlike Canada, where India has accused the Trudeau administration of supporting and enabling terrorism by targeting Sikh separatists, New Delhi has been much more restrained in its approach to US allegations about the plot to assassinate Pannun .

A team of Indian officials traveled to the United States last week to meet their American counterparts on this matter.

Analysts say this difference in India's response can largely be explained by how the United States and Canada have also approached the Pannun and Nijjar cases.

The indictment against Yadav and comments from Wray, Garland and others all clearly focus on the former RAW agent and his alleged accomplices, but avoid making direct accusations against the Indian government. This stands in stark contrast to Trudeau, who since last September has accused the Modi government of orchestrating Nijjar's murder.

Details of the unsealed indictment also highlight another major difference, said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center.

The United States has unveiled another very lengthy and detailed indictment that I think can be confidently described as a strong level of evidence to support the US allegations against India, Kugelman told Al Jazeera. However, Canada has not actually released the indictments. He has exposed numerous allegations to the public, but he has not provided, at least not to the public, the details and evidence to support these allegations.

This is one of the many reasons why India reacted so differently to the US allegations compared to how it reacted to the Canadian allegations.

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