Sikh activist named as assassination target says India wanted him dead

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has no doubts about who wants him dead.

“The conspiracy and plot to kill me comes from the government of India,” he said in an interview.

Mr Pannun is a Sikh separatist who envisions an independent Punjab, the northern Indian state where his religious minority group is dominant. His claim that India is out to get him was given credence by a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday charging an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, with a murder-for-hire plot ordered by an official within the national government . The accusation immediately put a damper on American-Indian relations.

Mr. Pannun is a 56-year-old American and Canadian citizen who has lived in New York City for almost thirty years. He was not named in the indictment, but U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday that he was the intended victim.

Mr. Pannun, general counsel of a New York-based group called Sikhs for Justice, which seeks independence for Punjab, said he was not surprised by the assassination plot against him. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country’s conservative Hindu leader, has a history of using violence to suppress criticism, he said.

“The indictment against Nikhil Gupta, I see it as an indictment against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he said on Wednesday evening.

The indictment against Mr. Gupta comes as the United States is courting India as an international counterweight to Russia and China, including through expanded defense and trade ties. Attempts to reach the Indian embassy for comment were not immediately successful Thursday.

Without mentioning Mr. Gupta’s name, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement suggested on Wednesday that it had cooperated with a US investigation into the plot, noting that “during the talks with the US on bilateral security cooperation, the US side shared some input regarding the nexus between organized criminals, arms smugglers, terrorists and others.”

According to the indictment, Mr. Gupta, who lives in India, had bragged about his involvement in “international drug and arms trafficking” to an unnamed Indian official with a background in “security management” and intelligence. That official instructed Mr. Gupta to find a hit man in the United States to kill Mr. Pannun, although that effort backfired, with the person approaching Mr. Gupta with an offer of $100,000 to kill Mr. Pannun was an American undercover agent.

The New York plot took place around the same time that a masked gunman killed another Sikh separatist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in British Columbia, just across the U.S. border. That killing prompted an angry response from the Canadian government, including from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who described it as “an unacceptable violation” of his country’s sovereignty. US officials had helped their Canadian counterparts link India to that killing.

Mr. Nijjar, who was the president of a Sikh temple in British Columbia, and Mr. Pannun had known each other for more than a decade. Shortly after Mr. Nijjar’s murder, Mr. Gupta, according to the indictment, told the undercover agent that “we have so many targets” and urged the ersatz killer to act quickly; the Indian government agent also sent Mr. Gupta a video clip of Mr. Nijjar’s body slumped in his car.

Mr. Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic shortly afterwards; It is not clear where he is currently being held. A phone call and email to an attorney representing him were not immediately returned.

Mr. Pannun, who lives in Queens and has law offices there and in California, says the Indian government has tried to label Sikh separatists as “terrorists” as they have tried to establish a sovereign nation known as Khalistan.

“If Modi says I am a terrorist, the whole world will stand up and start shooting and killing,” he said. “This is what they expected.”

Mr. Pannun has regularly posted outraged tirades against the Indian government and its officials online. But while India’s Sikh separatists resorted to violence in the 1980s, Mr. Pannun, like Mr. Nijjar, was not involved in terrorist activities and pursued an independent state through democratic means, according to people briefed on the couple’s activities. .

Few within India support Punjab’s secession, but Modi has used sectarian divisions to boost his fortunes. Before the last elections, in 2019, he took advantage of violent Islamic militancy from Pakistan to create a political wave.

The strengthening of a perceived Sikh separatist threat could give a boost to Mr Modi and his allies ahead of national elections early next year, and India has claimed Sikh extremists are plotting violence in Punjab.

Mr. Pannun said he did not know Mr. Gupta, nor did he know the Indian official who tried to arrange his killing. But he said tensions between the Indian government and Sikhs in Punjab were decades old.

“It’s news for America, it’s news for Canada,” he said. “But for the people leading these movements and campaigns for the right to self-determination, this is not a surprise to us.”

Mr. Pannun still seems wary; he declined to say whether he is married or has children. He also does not want to say when he was informed of the murder plan, even though media were present The Financial Times reported this month that the Biden administration had told the Indian government it had information about New Delhi’s involvement in the plot against Mr. Pannun.

“We are treating this matter with the utmost seriousness, and the issue has been raised by the US government with the Indian government, including at the highest levels,” the White House National Security Council said in a statement last week.

Mr Pannun says he remains committed to both his efforts on behalf of Sikhs and his religious beliefs.

“I am not afraid of physical death,” Mr. Pannun said. “We live in the home of the brave and the land of the free in America. We are not afraid of death. Because killing me will not stop the Khalistan freedom movement.”

Julian Barnes And Mujib Mashal reporting contributed.