The Justice Department announced criminal charges against an Indian government employee Thursday in connection with a foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.
The suspect, Vikash Yadav, remains at large but faces murder-for-hire charges in federal court.
The criminal case was announced the same week as two members of an Indian inquiry committee investigating the plot were in Washington to meet with U.S. officials about the investigation. Also this week, Canada said it had identified India's top diplomat in the country as a person of interest in the assassination of a Sikh activist there and expelled him and five other diplomats Monday.
"The Justice Department will be relentless in holding accountable any person — regardless of their position or proximity to power — who seeks to harm and silence American citizens," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the charges. "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 U.S. citizen is entitled."
The murder-for-hire plot was first disclosed by federal prosecutors last year when they announced charges against a man, Nikhil Gupta, who was recruited by a then-unidentified Indian government employee to orchestrate the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in New York.
In court documents unsealed last year, investigators in the Southern District of New York alleged Gupta was recruited to hire a hitman to murder the then unnamed victim, who prosecutors described in court papers as a vocal critic of the Indian government and staunch advocate for a Sikh sovereign state, often referred to as Khalistan.
The hitman, who would have been paid at least $100,000 in cash, was actually an undercover federal agent, and an unnamed co-conspirator Gupta discussed the plot with was a confidential government source, prosecutors revealed.
Gupta was extradited to the United States in June from the Czech Republic after his arrest in Prague last year.
In a statement, the intended victim, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, said the indictment means the U.S. government has "reassured its commitment to fundamental constitutional duty to protect the life, liberty and freedom of expression of the U.S. Citizen at home and abroad."
He added, "The attempt on my life on American Soil is the blatant case of India's transnational terrorism which has become a challenge to America's sovereignty and threat to freedom of speech and democracy, which unequivocally proves that India believes in using bullets while pro Khalistan Sikhs believe in ballots."
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