Federal prosecutors in New York alleged on Thursday that an Indian RAW official was involved in a plot to assassinate a separatist Sikh American national last summer, coinciding with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit. The official, identified as Vikas Yadav, 39, was employed by the Cabinet Secretariat, which oversees India's foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
Vikas Yadav, who is believed to have left government service, faces three charges, including murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
He “remains at large”, the Department of Justice said.
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His co-conspirator Nikhil Gupta was arrested in Czechoslovakia last year and is languishing in a US jail after extradition.
“Today’s charges demonstrate that the Justice Department will not tolerate attempts to target and endanger Americans and to undermine the rights to which every US citizen is entitled,” US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said.
“The defendant, an Indian government employee, allegedly conspired with a criminal associate and attempted to assassinate a US citizen on American soil for exercising their First Amendment rights,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
The Indian government has denied any involvement in the alleged plot to kill an American national on US soil. In response to the US allegations, New Delhi established an inquiry committee to investigate the matter, and the US has expressed satisfaction with India's cooperation.
The unsealing of the second indictment comes just 48 hours after an Indian inquiry committee met with an inter-agency team from the FBI, Department of Justice, and State Department to discuss these issues.
“We are satisfied with the cooperation. It continues to be an ongoing process. We continue to work with them on that, but we do appreciate the cooperation, and we appreciate them updating us on their investigation as we update them on ours,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Wednesday.
“The meeting that occurred yesterday – we updated – we being the US government broadly – updated members of the Committee of Inquiry about the investigation that the United States has been conducting. We’ve received an update from them on the investigation that they have been conducting. It was a productive meeting, and I will leave it at that,” Miller said.
“They did inform us that the individual, who was named in the Justice Department indictment, is no longer an employee of the Indian government,” he added.
Running into 18 pages, the indictment that was unsealed Thursday posts a pictures of Yadav in a military dress and also gives a picture of two persons exchanging dollars in a car in New York, which federal prosecutors said were the money being paid to the alleged killer by a person on behalf of Gupta and Yadav to assassinate the Sikh Separatist leader in New York. The picture is dated June 9, 20203. The name of the Sikh separatist, a US citizen, is not mentioned in the indictment.
“By indicting RAW Official Vikash Yadav in “Murder For Hire” Plot, US Government has reassured its commitment to fundamental constitutional duty to protect the life, liberty and freedom of expression of the US Citizen at home and abroad,” Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel to separatist Sikh for Justice, said in a statement after the indictment was released by the Department of Justice.
The damaging indictment alleges that Yadav along with his co-conspirator Nikhil Gupta plotted to kill the Sikh separatist leader in the summer of 2023. For this Gupta hired an individual to do the kill job. The unidentified individual, who was an informant to the FBI asked for USD100,000 for the job and received USD15,000 as an advance payment on June 9, 2023.
It was during the same month that President Joe Biden had invited Prime Minister Modi on a historic state visit, which took place on June 22. According to the indictment, Yadav told Gupta and the hired killer not to do the job immediately before or during the State visit.
The indictment reveals that there was a link between the murder of another Sikh separatist, Nijjar, in Canada during the same period. Federal prosecutors have shared communications between Yadav, Gupta and the alleged killer on the two incidents.
“A few minutes later, Yadav messaged Gupta, instructing: "let them also verify by their own... if they are able to get some proof that he is inside..it will be a go ahead from us," a reference to giving the green light to assassinate the Victim as soon as it could be verified that he was at his residence,” the federal prosecutors alleged.
The Department of Justice said the victim is a vocal critic of the Government of India and leads a U.S.-based organization that advocates for the secession of Punjab, a state in northern India that is home to a large population of Sikhs, an ethnoreligious minority group in India.
“The victim has publicly called for some or all of Punjab to secede from India and establish a Sikh sovereign state called Khalistan, and the Government of India has banned the Victim and his separatist organization from India. U.S. law enforcement detected and disrupted the plot to murder the Victim,” it said.
(With inputs from PTI)
