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A U. S. indictment claims an Indian official attempted to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun through a hitman in New York City.
By Jesse McKinley
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has no question about who wants him dead.
“The conspiracy and plot to kill me comes from the Indian government,” he said in an interview.
Mr. Pannun is a Sikh separatist who envisions an independent Punjab, the northern Indian state where his minority religious group is dominant. His assertion that India is out to get him was given credence by a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday that charged an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, in a murder-for-hire plot ordered up by an official inside the nation’s government. The accusation immediately cast a pall on American-Indian relations.
Pannun is a 56-year-old American-Canadian citizen who has lived in New York City for approximately three decades. He is not named in the indictment, but the U. S. government demonstrated Wednesday that he was the intended victim.
Mr. Pannun, a general counsel for 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 administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the nation’s conservative Hindu leader, has a history of using violence to suppress criticism, he said.
“The indictment of Nikhil Gupta, I see it as an indictment of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he said Wednesday night.
Gupta’s indictment comes as the U. S. courts India as a foreign counterweight to Russia and China, ramping up through expanded ties in defense and industry. Efforts to reach out to the Indian embassy for comment were unsuccessful on Thursday.
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