Gurpatwant Pannun ‘murder plot’: Indian Nikhil Gupta pleads not guilty, Czech Republic cops release video of extradition

Gurpatwant Pannun ‘murder plot’: An Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, extradited from the Czech Republic to the United States pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges related to an alleged plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader on American soil, AFP reported.

Nikhil Gupta, 52, was detained at Prague airport in June 2023 under a US warrant and was handed over to the United States on June 14, the report added. He appeared before a federal magistrate judge in New York on June 17, where he pleaded not guilty to charges of murder-for-hire.

The Czech Republic police shared a video of his extradition with Reuters.

Justice Department's statement

Attorney General Merrick Garland stated, “This extradition makes clear that the Justice Department will not tolerate attempts to silence or harm American citizens.” Garland added that Gupta would face justice in an American courtroom for his alleged involvement in a plot, directed by an Indian government employee, to target and assassinate a US citizen supporting the Sikh separatist movement in India.

“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 US citizen for his support of the Sikh separatist movement in India,” Garland said.

The Justice Department unsealed the charges against Gupta in November 2023, accusing him of conspiring with an unidentified Indian government official to kill a US citizen of Indian origin in New York City.

The alleged target was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US and Canadian citizen associated with Sikhs for Justice.

Court documents reveal that an employee of an Indian government agency, identified only as “CC-1”, recruited Gupta in May 2023 to carry out Pannun's assassination. Gupta allegedly contacted an individual he believed to be a criminal associate to hire a hitman, who turned out to be a confidential source working with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Diplomatic tensions

The case heightened diplomatic tensions between Canada and India after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau linked it to an alleged similar killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Khalistani activist, in June 2023.

Canadian authorities have arrested four Indian nationals in connection with Nijjar's murder, which occurred in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Vancouver.

Nijjar, who immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2015, was a proponent of a separate Sikh homeland, Khalistan. Indian authorities had accused him of terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.

Reactions and allegations

US intelligence agencies assessed that the plot on American soil was approved by India's top spy official at the time, Samant Goel, according to a report by the Washington Post in April 2024. India has denied involvement in the murder plots and pledged to investigate the allegations.

“If someone gives us any information, we would definitely look into it,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Financial Times in December last year.

Meanwhile, Pannun has welcomed Gupta's extradition as a “starting point” for the global community to “hold Modi's India accountable”. He said, “The attempt on my life on American soil is the blatant case of India's transnational terrorism challenging America's sovereignty and unequivocally proves that Modi's India believes in using violence to suppress the dissenting political opinion.”

The Khalistan movement has largely dwindled within India, but it retains support among a vocal minority in the Sikh diaspora, particularly in Canada, which has the largest Sikh community outside of India, numbering around 7,70,000 people.

(With inputs from AFP)