The Washington Post, an American newspaper, said in a report on Monday that a previous officer in India’s intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Vikram Yadav, had planned an attack on Khalistani Activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. According to the article, Vikram Yadav had enlisted the services of a kill squad and sent information about Pannun, including his residence in New York.
The Financial Times, a British daily, revealed in November 2023 that the US had thwarted a conspiracy to kill Pannun on US soil and had warned India that it might be complicit in the scheme.
The US Department of Justice accused an Indian official and one Nikhil Gupta of arranging Pannun’s death in December. In a statement, US officials stated that “an Indian government employee, working together with others, including Gupta, in India and elsewhere, directed a plot to assassinate on US soil an attorney and political activist who is a US citizen of Indian-origin residing in New York City”.
According to the department, Gupta intended to give an assassin, who was a confidential source for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, $100,000 to carry out the murder, with a $15,000 down payment.
A Manhattan court received an indictment from the department. As stated in the indictment report, an unidentified individual, ‘CC-1’, who supposedly oversaw the plan to assassinate Pannun. According to the charges, he enlisted Nikhil Gupta in May 2023 to plan Pannun’s murder.
According to the Washington Post story, Vikram Yadav was this “CC-1.” According to the allegation, senior RAW officers have also been linked to a broad inquiry conducted by the FBI and CIA.
According to the article, US intelligence services determined that Samant Goel, the RAW chief at the time, had given his approval for the operation targeting Pannun. Ajit Doval, India’s national security adviser, was allegedly also aware of RAW’s plans to assassinate Sikh activists, although officials emphasized that no concrete evidence had surfaced to support this assertion.
