The Justice Department announced on Thursday that an Indian intelligence official had been charged for his involvement in an attempted assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in the United States.
According to the department, 39-year-old Vikash Yadav is accused of conspiring to commit murder for hire and money laundering. Yadav is still at large.
Yadav is the second Indian national accused of participating in a plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a New York-based citizen of both the US and Canada.
Nikhil Gupta, 53, pleaded not guilty in June to involvement in the assassination plot after being extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic.
Pannun is affiliated with a New York-based group called Sikhs for Justice that advocates for the secession of Punjab, a northern Indian state with a large Sikh population.
Pannun, in a statement on X, denounced the alleged assassination plot as a “blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism” and a “threat to freedom of speech and democracy.”
The Justice Department accused Yadav of directing the plot and said he recruited Gupta in May 2023 to hire a hitman to carry out the murder.
Gupta allegedly contacted an individual he believed to be a criminal associate to hire a hitman. The individual was in fact a confidential source working with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
“Yadav, an employee of the Indian government, used his position of authority and access to confidential information to direct the attempted assassination of an outspoken critic of the Indian government here on US soil,” Anne Milgram, the DEA chief, said in a statement.
The Justice Department, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, “will be relentless in holding accountable any person — regardless of their position or proximity to power — who seeks to harm and silence American citizens.”
