U.S. Charges Indian Official in New York Assassination Plot

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have charged a man they identified as an Indian intelligence officer with trying to orchestrate from abroad an assassination on U.S. soil — part of an escalating response from the U.S. and Canada to what those governments see as brazenly illegal conduct by a longtime partner.

An indictment unsealed in Manhattan on Thursday said that the man, Vikash Yadav, “directed the assassination plot from India” that targeted a New York-based critic of the Indian government, a Sikh lawyer and political activist who has urged the Punjab region of India to secede.

The target of the New York plot has been identified by U.S. officials as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice.

In a statement, Pannun called the plot to kill him a “blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism which has become a challenge to America’s sovereignty and threat to freedom of speech and democracy.”

The indictment said that Yadav called himself a “senior field officer” in the part of the Indian government that includes its foreign intelligence service, known as the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW.

Authorities say Yadav recruited an associate to find a U.S.-based criminal to arrange the killing of the Sikh activist. Last year, U.S. prosecutors charged the man accused of being Yadav’s henchman, Nikhil Gupta, and said Gupta had acted under instructions from an unidentified employee of the Indian government. Now, prosecutors have charged Yadav with orchestrating the plot.

The indictment came just days after the Canadian government expelled India’s top diplomat and five others, saying they were part of a criminal network.

Canada’s action stemmed from the killing last year in that country of a prominent Sikh cleric, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was ambushed and shot in his pickup truck in Surrey, British Columbia.

The Canadian government has said the Indian government was behind that killing, just as U.S. authorities have blamed Indian authorities for the plot to kill the New York-based activist. The U.S. has shared intelligence with Canada as the two countries have investigated, officials said.

U.S. authorities say that after Nijjar’s killing, Yadav sent Gupta a news article about the New York target, which Yadav called a “priority now.” The person Gupta tried to enlist to carry out the killing, however, notified U.S. law enforcement, which set up a sting operation leading to the first indictment.

Gupta was arrested last year in the Czech Republic and extradited to the United States to face trial. He pleaded not guilty at a court appearance this summer. U.S. authorities believe Yadav is in India. Both men are now charged with murder for hire and conspiring to launder money.

The evidence detailed in the indictment paints a chilling portrait of a government aspiring to kill critics who live in North America, with Gupta suggesting at various points that the two targets were the start of a longer, bloodier campaign of killings of Sikh separatists living outside India.

“We have so many targets,” Gupta told the federal agent he had unwittingly hired to do the killing, the indictment said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said this week that he had recently pressed India’s leader, Narendra Modi, for cooperation in the investigation.

“I impressed upon him that it needed to be taken very, very seriously,” Trudeau told reporters. That entreaty apparently did not succeed, and days later Canada expelled half a dozen Indian officials. In response, India expelled an equal number of Canadian diplomats.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .