Nikhil Gupta pleads guilty: How the US drew links between Pannun plot and Nijjar’s killing

Nikhil Gupta, an Indian citizen charged with the 2023 assassination plot against Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York, has pleaded guilty in a US court. Gupta, 54, was arrested in the Czech Republic in June 2023 and extradited to the US a year later. After extradition, Gupta denied the charges against him. On Friday, however, he pleaded guilty to all three counts in the US Department of Justice’s (DoJ) 2024 indictment — murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He will be sentenced on May 29. Here is a look at the case, the DoJ’s charges, how it drew a link to the killing of another Khalistani operative, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, and what the Indian government’s stand has been. Gupta was accused of hiring a hitman — who was, in fact, an undercover US law enforcement officer — to kill Pannun in New York, making a $15,000 advance payment in May-June 2023. The US indicted him twice — once in 2023 and again in 2024. While neither the indictments nor the latest DoJ statement name Pannun — referring to him as a ‘US citizen’ and ‘victim’ — the details released have left little doubt about his identity. Pannun, who holds dual American and Canadian citizenship, heads the pro-Khalistan organisation Sikhs for Justice which is banned in India. New Delhi has dissociated itself from any plot against Pannun on multiple occasions, saying it is against government policy. The Ministry of External Affairs has called the allegations “unwarranted and unsubstantiated”. India set up a high-level inquiry committee in November 2023 to address security concerns raised by the US. Arrest and extradition After US prosecutors accused Gupta of plotting with others to kill Pannun, he travelled to the Czech Republic’s capital, Prague, from India in June 2023. There, Czech authorities arrested him under an extradition treaty between the US and the Czech Republic. A Czech court rejected his petition to avoid being sent to the US in May 2024, clearing the way for the extradition in June 2024. Ever since, Gupta has been lodged in a Brooklyn prison and maintained his innocence — until now. How DoJ drew a link to the Nijjar assasination The DoJ has drawn multiple links between the Pannun plot and the killing of Khalistani separatist Nijjar in Canada on July 18, 2023. Quoting FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky, the DoJ statement on Friday said: “The US citizen became a target of transnational repression solely for exercising their freedom of speech.” “Transnational repression” was the same term used by Canadian authorities in the context of their allegations against the Indian government over Nijjar’s assasination outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia. The allegations, rejected by India, left bilateral ties in tatters for years. Drawing another link to the Nijjar case, the US DoJ called the “victim” an “associate” of Nijjar. The second indictment by DoJ in 2024, quoted in Friday’s statement, says: “Nijjar was an associate of the victim, and, like the victim, was a leader of the Sikh separatist movement and an outspoken critic of the Indian government”. According to the statement, the day after the Nijjar murder, Gupta told the undercover officer that Nijjar “was also the target” and “we have so many targets”. Allegation of colluding with Indian government official In its statement Friday, the US DoJ said Gupta worked “at the direction and coordination” of an Indian government employee to plot the assisnation of a US citizen [that is, Pannun]. “In or about 2023, Gupta worked together with others in India and elsewhere, including, as alleged in the Second Superseding Indictment, co-defendant Vikash Yadav, who was at relevant times an Indian government employee, to plot the assassination of an attorney and political activist,” the statement said. Yadav was earlier named as CC1 in the DoJ’s November 2023 indictment. “Yadav was employed by the Government of India’s Cabinet Secretariat, which houses India’s foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing,” the DoJ statement alleged. On December 18, 2023, the Delhi Police Special Cell arrested Yadav — just three weeks after US authorities had listed him as CC1 in the Pannun case. Police accused him of extortion, kidnapping and links to the gangster Lawrence Bishnoi. In October 2024, the Ministry of External Affairs said that the individual named in the DoJ’s second indictment in 2024 was no longer employed by the Indian government. Yadav has not yet been arrested in connection with those charges, the statement said. The sentencing Gupta pled guilty to murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. This means he could potentially faces up to 40 years in prison. The quantum of the sentence, however, will be determined only on May 29. Divya A reports on travel, tourism, culture and social issues - not necessarily in that order - for The Indian Express. She's been a journalist for over a decade now, working with Khaleej Times and The Times of India, before settling down at Express. Besides writing/ editing news reports, she indulges her pen to write short stories. As Sanskriti Prabha Dutt Fellow for Excellence in Journalism, she is researching on the lives of the children of sex workers in India. ... Read More