New Delhi: Days before Donald Trump is inaugurated as the US president, the Indian government has issued a statement indirectly accepting the involvement of an Indian government official in a US case accusing him of attempting to assassinate a pro-Khalistani lawyer.
A high-powered government committee has recommended “legal action” against “an individual,” the press release, issued by the Union home ministry says. It also accepts weaknesses in systems and procedures in the government system in such matters that need to be fixed, suggesting the former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) officer acted independently.
A MHA release
This is the first public acceptance by the Indian government of the role of its official and systems in the alleged murders which first came to light in 2023 after a statement by the Canadian prime minister in parliament. The press release was not issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), as has been the case with all the previous press releases on the subject, or the National Security Council Secretariat which deals with intelligence agencies in the Prime Minister’s Office. It draws in the Union home ministry which has not been publicly involved in the matter so far, despite Canadian officials naming home minister Amit Shah as the high-ranking Indian official who allegedly ordered the transnational killings.
The vaguely worded press release states that a high-powered enquiry committee has submitted its report – nearly 14 months after it was set up by the Indian government – on activities of some organised criminal groups and terrorist organisations, which undermined the security interests of both India and the United States. The Narendra Modi government was forced to order the probe in November 2023 under pressure from the Biden administration when the US Department of Justice went public regarding the attempt by Indian officials, with the help of criminals, to kill pro-Khalistan campaigner Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York.
“After a long enquiry, the Committee has submitted its report to the Government and recommended legal action against an individual, whose earlier criminal links and antecedents also came to notice during the enquiry. The Enquiry Committee has recommended that the legal action must be completed expeditiously,” stated the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) press release.
The home ministry, however, did not name the individual against whom legal action should be initiated, and sought to distance the Government of India from the actions of a former intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, who is indicted by the United States for his alleged role in a plot to murder Pannun.
In an indictment in October, the US Justice Department announced criminal charges against Indian government employee Vikash Yadav in connection with an alleged foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City. Yadav, who authorities say directed the New York plot from India, faces murder-for-hire charges in a planned killing that prosecutors have previously said was meant to precede a string of other murders in North America. Yadav is a former Indian CRPF official who served in the R&AW.
Although the press release neither named Yadav nor confirmed his status as a government official, reports indicate that an Indian inquiry committee travelled to the US in October 2024 as part of the investigation. A US State Department media note at the time mentioned the Indian committee’s active probe into “the individual who was identified last year in the Department of Justice’s indictment as an Indian government employee who directed a foiled plot to assassinate a US citizen in New York City”.
Canada
Similar charges have also been levelled by Canada where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September 2023 that Canada had credible evidence that agents of the Indian government were involved in the murder of pro-Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June 2023. Canadian authorities have repeatedly said they have shared evidence of that with Indian authorities, but the Modi government has repeatedly dismissed the allegations. Canada had publicly alleged that the government in New Delhi allegedly works with a criminal network affiliated with incarcerated gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.
The United States has asked India to cooperate with Canada’s investigation into the killing of Nijjar, calling the allegations “extremely serious.” In October, the US said, “When it comes to the Canadian matter, we have made clear that the allegations are extremely seriously and they need to be taken seriously. And we wanted to see the government of India cooperate with Canada in its investigation. Obviously, they have not chosen that path”. Canada and the United States are both members of the Five Eyes alliance, which also has the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand as members.
The MHA statement makes no reference to Pannun or the murder of Nijjar in Canada – which officials in Ottawa and Washington have linked to the R&AW and also Union home minister Amit Shah.
While the Modi government has officially denied all the charges made on record by the Canadians, it established a high level enquiry committee in November 2023 in the wake of the first Pannun indictment by the US, when Washington pushed India to accept responsibility for the plot.
Nikhil Gupta, Vikash Yadav and a ‘lone wolf’
The home ministry statement notably suggests that the officer was a ‘lone wolf’ with criminal antecedents who apparently exploited weaknesses in India’s intelligence system to carry out a rogue operation, resulting in India being mentioned alongside China and Iran in discussions of transnational repression.
To buttress the rogue operator theory, the MHA press release says the Committee “has further recommended functional improvements in systems and procedures as also initiation of steps that could strengthen India’s response capability, ensure systematic controls and coordinated action in dealing with matters like this.”
The statement noted that the Enquiry Committee conducted its “own investigations,” “pursued leads provided by the US side,” examined officials from various agencies, and scrutinised documents.
In November 2023, the US authorities had unsealed an indictment that charged an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, for charges of attempted murder of Pannun. The charges observed that Gupta was directed by an Indian government official, who was then identified only as “CC-1.”
A year later, on October 18, 2024, the US prosecutors unsealed a second indictment that directly charged “CC-1,” now identified as Vikash Yadav, an official at the cabinet secretariat under the prime minister’s office.
The MEA later stated that he was “no longer an employee of the government of India.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation had also issued a “wanted notice” which listed his birthplace as Pranpura in Haryana, with his birthdate as December 11, 1984.
It was subsequently revealed that just three weeks after the first US indictment in 2023 named Nikhil Gupta and referred to an unnamed government official from the CRPF and R&AW, Yadav was arrested by Delhi Police on December 18, which was around the last time that he was seen by neigbours in his South Delhi government flat.
As per the Delhi Police FIR, Yadav abducted a resident of Rohini and attempted to extort him on December 11. After reportedly spending four months in jail, he was released in April on bail. Thereafter, his whereabouts are unknown.
When The Wire visited Yadav’s village in Haryana in October 2024, his family had said that he had called them immediately and told him that he was “safe and sound,” but did not reveal his whereabouts.
A Delhi court on November 16, granted exemption from hearings for about three months to Vikash Yadav, accepting Yadav’s plea citing threats to his life and directed him to appear for the next hearing on February 3, 2025, reported the Indian Express.
In another twist, records of the Central Administrative Tribunal’s principal bench in Delhi show that Yadav’s case against the Cabinet Secretariat for not confirming his deputation was deposed off on the same day when the first indictment was released in New York in 2024. The bench had observed that the Yadav’s lawyer stated that the government had confirmed in “the post of SFO (GD) in Executive Cadre of DG (S) in respect of the applicant with effect from 13.11.2015”.
